`I think we'll look back on this time and think of it as the Decade of the Gap," announces Fay Weldon. Weldon, 67, bestselling author of over 20 books - mostly novels, but also essays - says: "I get there two weeks before other people": in other words, she can articulate trends when most of us still haven't a clue what's going on. She admits this has often got her into trouble. But before we are sidetracked into her well-documented, ire-inducing deconstruction of feminism and psychotherapy, and her noticing that it is men rather than women these days who are "the drowning gender", why is the dawning of the new millennium the decade of the gap?
"What I mean is," says Weldon in her patient, chatty voice, which sounds British but in a muted way, because she spent her formative years in New Zealand, "I think we'll look back and be horrified rather than smug about the gap between our real motives and what we hope our motives are. We like to appear politically correct, caring and sharing, as if we've reached the pinnacle of all right thinking. But really it's business as usual; quite ruthless in fact."
London-based Weldon has found herself thinking in terms of "society, decade by decade" recently because she is writing her autobiography, due for completion at the end of the year: "It's more of an historical document than about me, really. It's enormous fun to write. I've been looking back over the years, noticing the pattern of changing thought. You can almost see it change with the noughts as each decade goes by." She decided to write her autobiography after the publication of a recent book of essays - Godless in Eden - in which she included "some personal things": "People liked it. I realised you could reveal yourself without revealing yourself."
Few of her novels are autobiographical, she insists. The most notable exception is Affliction (1994), a chilling satire about how two corrupt psychotherapists break up a marriage. Her husband, Ron Weldon, left her after 30 years of marriage when his therapist said his star signs were incompatible with those of his wife. Spicer, the husband of Annette in Affliction, is convinced by his therapist that he must leave the marriage. In the process he almost convinces Annette that she is going mad. Weldon comments: "In a close relationship with someone they have great power in your head. If they abuse this they can render you helpless by emotional manipulation. I went through that myself."
She continues: "There were a lot of complaints when I wrote Affliction that if I included two bad therapists, I should have put in a good therapist, too. I said, `This is a novel, not a BBC documentary'. There's a double standard whereby male writers are allowed the freedom to be truly horrid but women writers are expected to be nice and fair." She muses: "The truth of things lies in invention. You plumb the group unconscious."
A recurrent theme in the Weldon novel is the sat-upon woman whose husband brainwashes her into sexual and domestic servitude while her best friend lets her down. She is suddenly liberated when she comes to her senses and either walks out, or takes dark and vengeful action.
"I don't necessarily recommend revenge, although action is much better than passive suffering," says Weldon. "I think patience is needed to work out the most painful thing, and that is your own part in everything." Her novels work through the dark and the light towards a resolution. "There has to be some way out and there usually is. Lives that appear wrecked suddenly mend, like broken legs. People's capacity for getting the best out of things survives."
Some of her works have been converted to celluloid. The Hollywood version of The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1983), starring Meryl Streep and Roseanne Barr, disappointed her, but she liked the Channel 4 version of her more recent novel, Big Women (1998), screened just over a year ago. "The story was said to be a portrait of Virago but it wasn't. It was what would have happened to a feminist publishing house, set up in the 1970s, collapsing 25 years later."
What did feminists think of it? "I kept out of their way," chuckles Weldon. Despite being frequently described as a feminist writer, her unflattering portrayals of the sisterhood have often made her a target of feminist anger. "Big Women was a dramatisation of a sociological movement rather than a novel. The characters were used as demonstrations of the thoughts, emotions and situations that made up a movement. It's an encapsulation of 30 years of life, with all the different strands - sexual freedom, socialist feminism, lesbianism. No-one else has attempted to depict feminism, which is comparable to communism - an extraordinary movement which made an incredible impact on our lives."
The impact has not all been positive: "My early books make me anxious now. They continue to inflame women against men, which is no longer appropriate. Men are not the bullies they were. Society has changed. Women can't enjoy the victim status they had in the 1970s." In Big Women, the narrator comments: "Revolution costs the lives of a generation".
Weldon, herself the mother of four sons and three stepsons, explains: "It's true. The pill came along, women went out to work, and stopped having children. Our birth rate is now shockingly low. No-one has enough money to be able to have the number of children they really want. I understand now what the church was going on about. We are losing the mystery of childbirth. By we, I mean men and women."
Fay Weldon reads from her work at the Black Box on Wednesday, July 26th at 6.30 p.m.
