THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 26, 1995 TAG: 9507260039
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
IT'S ALL STILL here. The wronged wife, the faithless buffoon of a husband, the relentless quest for post-marital revenge. ``Splitting'' (The Atlantic Monthly Press, 246 pp., $21), Fay Weldon's 20th novel, contains all of the author's signature ingredients and then some. But what really defines this book is an ingenious new twist on Weldon's timeless theme of domestic destruction: the split personality.
In the aftershock of her husband's betrayal, Lady Angelica Rice finds herself in pieces. Literally. She fragments into four separate personalities, all of whom immediately commence to gang up on her, and to bicker incessantly among themselves about how best to salvage her. As Lady Rice lies despondent, moaning over her extensive woes, the four stay busy conspiring, sabatoging and trying to suppress each others' baser urges.
Weldon's plot has remained unvaried for years. ``Splitting'' once again documents the victimization of a clueless wife and her subsequent quest to balance the scales. As usual, ridiculous men perpetrate outrages, diabol-ical forces swirl, guerrilla tactics must be resorted to. As usual, Weldon's cheerfully sadistic brand of narrative commentary presides over everything.
``Poor Lady Rice,'' she observes: ``See how she goes through her life stunned, flickering out of one persona, into another, as men and women do when they discover that concepts of love, of home and permanence, are not placed on rock, but on shifting sand? When the Velcro splits and tears and the trousers and the knickers fall down and everyone laughs, even those who live in luxurious hotels can be pitied.''
Jelly and Angelica, the first two members of Lady Rice's psychological entourage, emerge as she lies prostrate outside the front gates of her husband's ancestral estate (having just been dragged by the hair and deposited there by said husband).
``Get up,'' said Jelly.
``What's the difference if I'm up or down?'' said Lady Rice. ``I'd rather be dead anyway.''
``Well, I wouldn't,'' said Angelica. ``So get up and start walking.''
``Where do I go?'' asked Lady Rice.
``To Mum's,'' said Jelly. ``Where else?''
In the weeks that follow, as Lady Rice flounders in the throes of her personal holocaust, Jelly and Angelica take brisk control. Jelly steals Lord Rice's credit cards and uses them to pay for a room at the luxurious Claremont Hotel. She brushes up on her secretarial skills and procures a job in the office of the lawyer hired to cheat Lady Rice out of alimony, the better to sabotage his efforts at every turn.
Angelica, meanwhile, takes care of the details. Like dragging Lady Rice out of bed every morning, and making her wash her face.
Just as things seem to be improving, a fourth personality shows up in the form of Angel, a compulsive sex kitten who never stops cruising. Angel marks her arrival by making the four of them have sex in the back seat of a Volvo with a chauffeur named Ram. Next, she tries to cajole Jelly into having an affair with Brian Moss, the lawyer she is undermining.
``I won't do any such thing,'' said Jelly. ``Angelica is right. I'd only get fired. That's what happens in office romances. . . ''
``But I want to. I mean to,'' yelled Angel. . . drowning out reason. ``I want Brian Moss now, you mean old bitch, and I'll have him.''
And she does.
The bills add up at the Claremont. Angel orders champagne and club sandwiches from room service, but Angelica prefers Coke and Danish pastries. Lady Rice, meanwhile, can only pick at steamed lobster. ``A great deal of food is ordered,'' observes Weldon's ruthlessly upbeat narrator. ``But very little eaten.''
At one point, a fifth personality, a man named Ajax, makes a brief appearance, but is soon chased away. ``I am male, separate and indivisible, and I am in charge around here,'' he tells the others.
``Angelica,'' says Jelly, ``put that man away at once.''
``I'll try,'' says Angelica.
``It isn't decent having a man in here anyway,'' says Lady Rice. ``It makes me feel very peculiar.''
``I like it,'' says Angel. ``It makes me feel ever so sexy. You don't have to listen to what he says. He's only a man.''
Weldon is the queen of irony, the empress of sexual revenge, the patron saint of jilted women everywhere. So what if she keeps writing the same book over and over again? She's fun to read. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
``Splitting'' is Fay Weldon's 20th novel.
by CNB