When FW
showed this novel to Louis Simpson
, a US poet and academic whom she hoped to impress, he replied, angrily (in her account) that it was not a proper novel,
Weldon, Fay. Mantrapped. Fourth Estate, 2004.
82
since it...
Literary responses
Fay Weldon
FW
tried this too, before publication, on Louis Simpson
. He suggested it was a rip-off of Mary McCarthy
's The Group, and said that introducing eight characters on the first page was too...
Literary responses
Anne Sexton
American reviews were mixed, saying things like sure, dramatic movement, but also they read like a fever chart, and (from Louis Simpson
) mere self-dramatization. Sexton replied to Simpson: The poems are children of...
Textual Features
Fay Weldon
The story is told from a combination of third- and first-person narration, interspersed with terse play-script dialogue. FW
said later that she had taken Louis Simpson
's advice about how novels should be written.
