Trouble

Fay Weldon tells the story of a common-law marriage in crisis while skewering two other institutions of reverence and repression: psychiatry and the British middle class
After ten years of living with Spicer, Annette is finally pregnant; her first book is about to be published; and her common-law marriage is unraveling—or, rather, it starts to after Spicer goes into psychotherapy. Suddenly, Spicer is taking up astrology, finding constant fault with Annette, and making cruel sexual demands. To humor him, Annette seeks psychiatric help as well—until her therapist makes her life a living hell. As battle rages between them, Annette learns a lot about herself and the man she thought she knew. Trouble is a piercing novel that perforates Jungian therapy and the mind games played in the name of science, while capturing the painful disintegration of a relationship.
“Weldon writes as if she were Virginia Woolf and Roseanne Arnold joined at the hip. She is literary, well-read, totally in control, sharp as a needle and off the wall. Everything is perfect.” —Mirabella
“A fiercely funny tale of nuptial betrayal.” —Chicago Tribune

“Impossible to put down . . . A wickedly splendid showcase of Weldon’s genius with dialogue and satire on modern culture, proving once again that she is a virtuoso of dark humor and dangerous wit.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Meet the shrink from hell . . . alternately laughing and gasping, the reader follows Annette out the pit and into the daylight.” —The Miami Herald
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.