Praxis by Weldon, Fay - 1993

Trafalgar Square, 1993. Very Good. An astonishingly vivid and wickedly funny portrait of a woman and her times , Praxis is a story told from two viewpoints - Praxis as a young girl and P raxis as an old woman. At age five, Praxis Duveen is "the pretty one," her sister, Hypatia, "the artistic one, and very sensitive;" their mother, Lucy , "clearly valued sensitivity above prettiness." While Lucy fights to prote ct her place in the heart of her children's father - not her husband - and in the eyes of a society not of her choosing, Hypatia collects awards in sc hool and Praxis propels herself into life and love. Looking back as an old woman, Praxis cannot forgive her mother or cherish her memories: "I, Praxis Duveen, being old and scarcely in my right mind, now bequeath you my memor ies. They may help you: they certainly do nothing to sustain me, let alone assist my bones to clamber out of the bath." Neither the young or the old P raxis are especially likeable, and both are subject to wild errors in judgm ent. Fay Weldon pulls no punches in her pointed and witty observations of B ritish middle-class values and behavior as she creates a discomfortingly be lievable picture of an ordinary woman in a society that does not value wome n.