How many women think of success in their lives in terms of men? Can this now become an attitude of the past? Such is Fay Weldon's theme in her new novel Down Among the Women. Writing in the present tense, but retaining throughout the benefit of 1970's hindsight, she weaves a clever tapestry of twenty years in the lives of a group of women living in London.

Wanda is middle-aged in 1950, a resilient character, tough and independent. A 'thirties Communist, she left her husband years before for a scruffy linoleum existence in Belsize Park because he, an artist, sold out to commerce. Her daughter, Scarlet, is twenty, unmarried, pregnant, firghtened but defiant, and the pivot of this group. Her friends: Silvia, a pale, damaged girl, born victim; Jocelyn, snobbish and unhappy, until she recognizes that what she thinks she wants is not what she needs; Audrey, clever, eagerly embracing marriage, until the straps of convention are finally broken with, for her, gratifying results; and Helen, beautiful and remote, whose capacity for love brings only tragedy.

Down among the women, inherited outlooks on life die hard … Often funny, always convincing, Down Among the Women has a strong 'fifties and 'sixties flavour with a painful 'seventies bite.