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Down Among the Women

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

The Mermaid Collection

A classic from beloved national treasure Fay Weldon sees four women break the shackles of patriarchy and domesticity in 1950s London, from the author of The Lives and Loves of a She-Devil

With a foreword by Jenny Colgan
‘Down among the women. What a place to be!’

So says Wanda, a former radical who left her husband and raised her daughter Scarlet to be as liberated as she. But twenty-year-old Scarlet, with an abortion already behind her, is about to discover real liberation – as a single mother in Fifties’ London.
Yet Scarlet’s not alone. Meet her friends: Sylvia, the born victim; respectable Jocelyn, willingly trapped in a dull, bourgeois marriage; Audrey, bristling to break free of her conventional life; and Helen, beautiful, vibrant – and very doomed.

Over the course of twenty years, from the Fifties to the Seventies, Scarlet, Wanda and their friends will wonder if they can ever become the women they always dreamed of being.

Praise for Fay Weldon:
'A national treasure' Literary Review


© Fay Weldon 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

 City Life Classics Family Life Friendship Genre Fiction Urban Marriage
All stars
Most relevant
I loved listening to this, it felt so real and raw and spiky. there was no softening of the edges of the characters. it stands up well today too, I wouldn't have guessed it was written in the 1970s.

4.5* - wonderfully spiky

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