Welding the past

Auto da Fay, Fay Weldon’s memoirs spanning her NZ upbringing and early adulthood in London, reviewed in the New York Times. “You hesitate to label Auto da Fay – a virtuoso triple pun on inquisitorial self-punishment – as [Weldon’s] first venture at memoir because so much of its material shows up as roots for her novels. So do the wit, the shrewdly disconcerting marksmanship, the refusal to engage herself even with herself … What jolts the attention back is eruptions of incandescence, something other than warmth.”