Watching Me, Watching You

Fay Weldon’s first short-story collection features her trademark themes of feminism, sisterhood, and domestic livelihood, where the ties that bind can also draw blood
Love, loss, and the ever-changing sexual battlefield are the themes of this early anthology by master storyteller Fay Weldon: In “Christmas Tree,” the adulterous playwright hero embarks on a quest for true love, perhaps the most self-deceiving state of all; “Breakages” explores the fragility of married life as a miserly vicar’s infertile wife contemplates his much-darned socks amid ghostly visitations; the loss of hair and female friendship are brought to poignant life in “Alopecia,” while religion becomes an excuse for infidelity in “Holy Stones”; a holiday game of Monopoly reveals the widening holes in the fabric of a family in “Man with No Eyes”; and an old house and its inhabitants are haunted by doomed love in the title story. By turns humorous, ironic, and tragic, Watching Me, Watching You presents Fay Weldon at her most witty, original, and courageous.