For two thirds of its length, The Heart Of The Country by Fay Weldon is a brilliant, surprising, humorous, bitchy study of adopted and original rural life. Natalie, who was born with attributes of beauty and desirability, has suffered the confusion of many with her birthright. With the world available to her, she chose Harris, whose business acumen eventually matched his other skills. And so he went bust. He also ran away with that bit of fluff he used to see when...
So Natalie, bestowed Natalie, is left penniless, mortgaged up to the hilt, carrying her husband's abandoned debt and still trying to provide for his children, whom, of course, he left behind. A pity, therefore, that the local nob she used to visit every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon for a bit of light relief did not entertain an emulation of her husband's life change.
And then there's Sonia. Sonia has seen it all. On the state, on the take, on family credit, dole, s ocial, whatever. Natalie happens to splash her one day as she drives past on what petrol is left in the tank of the car her husband used to fund.
Sonia has analysis. She knows things. She can spot a person up to this, or doing that at a distance. Whether an antique dealer, a respected farmer, a man with a computer business, of even a man who drives an Audi with an eye for a flousie young thing flashing her thigh, she picks up the vibes, registers them, keeps them on file. He knows the ropes. She feels she has been hung by each and every one of them several times. She's on the social and knows how to cook from tins. She's also a cynic, a closet psychopath with aces to grind.
If the Heart Of The Country had continued to explore these local, colourful and humorous rivalries, then the book would have been ultimately stronger. Unfortunately, Fay Weldon moves into other, broader, bigger issues, and has her local people voice their significance . She delves into aribusiness, diets, supermarkets, economic and professional, rather than merely social integrity. She stops short of macrobiotic diets, but only just.
Eventually, the book becomes something of a mish-mash of ideas it could easily and profitably ignored. Its original thrust of human beings doing as complicatedly as human beings do in order to create, effect and endure consequences would have been much more powerful.