| The witty, mischievous and supremely artful Fay Weldon announces on the first page of The Hearts and Lives of Men that she has written a love story and gives away its ending--hapPy. It is a love story, though, with all the obstacles, both devilish and divine--a tale of innocence corrupted and selfishness reformed. Helen Lally is 22, the stunning daughter of an impoverished artist whose fame and for- tune will soon be made. Woe to her for catching the eye of Clifford Wexford, a 35- year-old art dealer, rapaciously ambitious, eminently eligible and careless of all lives but his own. In the space of nine months in the ever- so-swinging 60 s, Helen and Clifford meet, fall instantly in love, marry and produce the enchanting Nell. But there the wand changes hands, as it will, time and again, in the course of this seductively high-spirited novel. "Someone, somewhere, must be wicked," says the nar- rator, "or the world wouldn t be in the state it s in." Clifford falls prey to a scheming heiress; the perfect marriage ends in divorce; and little Nell, due to her parents fecklessness and avarice, is lost. Lost to them, that is, until years later, when they have learned enough to deserve her. |
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