'ONE OF OUR VERY BEST WRITERS' Sunday Times

'A tour de force'
The Times

'Intoxicating'
Daily Telegraph

'Devilishly delightful'
New York Times Book Review

'Beautifully and compellingly written'
Sunday Express

'Audacious'
Times Literary Supplement

The bestselling classic tale of a woman scorned, from a much-loved British author

Ruth Patchett never thought of herself as particularly devilish.

Rather the opposite in fact - simply a tall, not terribly attractive woman living a quiet life as a wife and mother in a respectable suburb. But when she discovers that her husband is having a passionate affair with the lovely romantic novelist Mary Fisher, she is so seized by envy that she becomes truly diabolic. Within weeks she has burnt down the family home, collected the insurance, made love to the local drunk and embarked on a course of destruction and revenge.

A blackly comic satire of the war of the sexes, The Life and Loves of a She Devil is the fantasy of the wronged woman made real.


PRAISE FOR FAY WELDON

'She's a Queen of Words'
Caitlin Moran

'A national treasure'
Literary Review

'The literary equivalent of a stiff drink, a dip in the Atlantic in January, a pep talk by a mildly sadistic coach'
New York Times

'Times have changed and Weldon is one of the people who have changed them'
The Times

'One of the great lionesses of modern English literature'
Harper's Bazaar

'Fay Weldon's voice is as unmistakeable as her acerbic wit'
Financial Times

A new edition of the bestselling classic tale of a woman scorned, from a much-loved British author.

About the Author

Fay Weldon was a well known novelist, playwright, critic and scriptwriter. Her first novel, A Fat Woman's Joke, was published in 1967 and she published 38 more novels after that, including the widely acclaimed and bestselling The Life and Loves of a She Devil, which has been adapted for screen, television and radio. She also wrote seven collections of short stories and several works of non-fiction, including her autobiography Auto Da Fay and Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen. Awarded a CBE in 2001, she was appointed Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University in 2012.
For more information about Fay and her work, visit her website: www.fayweldon.co.uk.

Reviews
A tour de force: a macabre, fast-moving moral fable * The Times *
More audacious and striking in design than anything that has gone before . . . carried out with such dash and glitter * Times Literary Supplement *
Rousing . . . stimulating . . . the fun grows steadily blacker and wilder * Guardian *
A savage, sadistic even, but beautifully and compellingly written satire * Sunday Express *
Intoxicating * Daily Telegraph *
A novel of blazingly hot revenge, one that amply illustrates the saying about heaven having no rage like love turned to hate, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned * New York Magazine *
Devilishly delightful . . . It affords a scintillating, mindboggling, vicarious thrill for any reader who has ever fantasised dishing out retribution for one wrong or another * New York Times Book Review *
What makes this a powerfully funny and oddly powerful book is the energy of the language and of the intellect that conceived it, an energy that vibrates off the pages and that makes She Devil as exceptional a book in the remembering as in the reading . . . . a small, mad masterpiece * Washington Post *
Fantastic . . . a carefully worked-out fable, satiric and finally bitter . . . it's very funny * Chicago Tribune *



Book Information
ISBN 9780340589359
Author Fay Weldon
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Sceptre
Publisher Hodder & Stoughton
Weight(grams) 182g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 128mm * 22mm