Big Girls Don't Cry: A Novel

Fay Weldon

May 2013 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

First-wave feminism takes front and center in this fearless novel, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, about women determined to succeed in a man’s world—only to be foiled by their own ambition
“A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle.” It’s the 1970s, and the sexual revolution is just beginning. Four women have decided to open a feminist publishing house. Named in honor of the gorgon who turned men’s hearts to stone, MedusaPublishing gives the so-called Four Furies a platform for speaking out against female oppression.      Layla is a wealthy, fundamental radical, intolerant of anyone whose ideals deviate, even slightly, from her own—that is, until she finds herself seduced by a married man; tiny Alice is “all mind and very little matter,” until she discovers the dangerous New Age practice of goddess worship; Stephanie leaves her unfaithful husband in pursuit of sexual fulfillment with other men—and women; and Nancy, tired of washing her fiancé’s socks, discovers she has a remarkable mind for business. Big Girls Don’t Cry is the story of four women who are determined to change the world, and who, over the course of two-and-a-half decades, ultimately transform themselves.

About the author

Novelist, playwright, and screenwriter Fay Weldon was born in England, brought up in New Zealand, and returned to the United Kingdom when she was fifteen. She studied economics and psychology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. She worked briefly for the Foreign Office in London, then as a journalist, and then as an advertising copywriter. She later gave up her career in advertising, and began to write fulltime. Her first novel, The Fat Woman’s Joke, was published in 1967. She was chair of the judges for the Booker Prize for fiction in 1983, and received an honorary doctorate from the University of St Andrews in 1990. In 2001, she was named a Commander of the British Empire. Weldon’s work includes more than twenty novels, five collections of short stories, several children’s books, nonfiction books, magazine articles, and a number of plays written for television, radio, and the stage, including the pilot episode for the television series Upstairs Downstairs. She-Devil, the film adaption of her 1983 novel The Life and Loves of a She Devil, starred Meryl Streep in a Golden Globe–winning role.