Reviews

When Weldon (Splitting, LJ 4/15/95) writes a novel about marriage, death, friendship, and adultery, we are assured a witty dissection of all that we hold near and dear. Alexandra is performing on the London stage when she receives word of her husband Ned's sudden death from a heart attack. She returns home to find her closest friends tidying up the details of his mysterious death. Is grief making Alexandra paranoid, or is there something strange about her friends visiting the morgue before she does? And why is the plump, plain Jenny Linden wailing outside her window, claiming to be Ned's true love? When even the dog turns on her, Alexandra goes a little crazy and breaks into Jenny's house searching for evidence. Confronted with the truth that her picture-perfect marriage was perfect only in her eyes, Alexandra falls apart. Only when all around her turn against her and she stands to lose everything does Alexandra pull herself together and take control. Playing on the reader's worst fears, Weldon has spun a web of humor and horror, humiliation and revenge that's not to be missed. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/96.]‘Kathy Ingels Helmond, Indianapolis-Marion County P.L., Ind.

In Weldon's fictional universe, a character's worst fears are often not the half of it: the horrific reality of the situations in which her protagonists find themselves often go beyond anything they could have imagined. This is certainly true of Alexandra Ludd, a successful stage actress who is performing in Ibsen's A Doll's House when her husband, Ned, a theater critic, dies in their country house. Alexandra takes a leave of absence from the London production, only to find that her friends in the country all seem to be engaged in some kind of cover-up regarding the circumstances of Ned's death. It gradually becomes clear to Alexandra that her husband lived a very different and more promiscuous life than she'd ever suspected. As always, Weldon's fast-paced black comedy is as compulsively readable as it is unpleasant, but Alexandra's utter failure to have perceived any hint of her husband's real nature makes her remarkably unobservant, and her treatment of their son, Sascha, makes her seem outright cold-blooded, while those around her are malicious and spiteful to the point of sadism. The plot, which essentially adheres to Murphy's law with only a couple of unpredictable detours, lacks the cleverness or complexity to be found in such previous Weldon books about women scorned as The Lives and Loves of a She-Devil and Trouble. But even average Weldon is full of delights, and admirers of her witty malevolence will find much here to enjoy loathing. (June)