She May Not Leave

By Fay Weldon and weldon-fay

Book Overview

Fay Weldon lets her incisive wit loose on a hot issue facing many modern families -- child care, and what can happen when that involves having a nanny under your roof. Hattie and Martyn are the proud parents of newborn Kitty; both are in their early thirties, smart, handsome, and, for reasons of liberal principle, not married but partnered. All seems fine at first -- healthy baby, happy couple -- but when they have to decide who'll look after little Kitty, things get complicated. Hattie's dying to get back to work but Martyn fears employing foreign help might hurt his leftist political aspirations. Martyn capitulates when Agnieska arrives -- a Polish nanny who happens to be both domestic goddess and first-rate belly dancer, the maker of a mean cup of cocoa who's also educated in early childhood development. Having her in the house makes life livable again for the young couple, so when problems arise with her immigration papers Martyn and Hattie will do anything to keep her in the country. But will their decision to have Martyn marry her be the trouble-free solution they envision?

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0871139421
• ISBN13: 9780871139429
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 15.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

A hilarious farce!

This is one of the funniest books I ever read. In fact, I loved it so much that I went on line to order it for a friend, when I saw the previous poor reviews on this website. Briefly, this book is not meant to be realistic in any way! It is a farce. Satire. Anyone who picks it up expecting a naturalistic novel about life as it is for most people will be terribly disappointed. It is a very English book, and many Americans won't like its wicked humor. The protagtonist is a young, modern professional mother who can't wait to get back to work and get her life back, and so hires an eastern European woman to be a live-in nanny. It's not giving much away to say that the nanny encroaches on the the lives of the protagonist and her husband, but in entirely unpredictable ways. (Even the title is ambiguous: is someone being forbidden to leave, and who? Or does it express fear that an unwelcome interloper may never go? It's never clear.) I loved this book's shock ending. No, it is not realistic. But it is hilarious and memorable. And the very last revelation in the book is so unexpected, and does rather explain the strange denoument. A brilliant satire. Give it a try.

much better than expected

I got this book by accident--I was on vacation in England and grabbed some British women's magazine off the rack in the gas station, thinking I would have a little mindless reading for the train ride. Well, in England a lot of magazines include free gifts, and this book was shrink-wrapped to it. I expected this to be a silly romance novel, on the level of the ones Cosmopolitan prints excerpts from. I had never heard of Fay Weldon. So I was quite surprised to find a very, very darkly humorous and well-written novel. The key is that NONE of the characters in this are sentimentalized at all. While Martyn and Hattie and Frances et. al. really do love each other, they are predominantly self-interested. Martyn is more concerned with the future of his political journalism career than with his partner's slow breakdown, Hattie is more concerned about being able to go back to work than with the obvious play Agnieszka is making for her common-law husband and child, Agnieszka is more concerned about getting to stay in England than by the damage this could cause Kitty in the long run, and even Baby Kitty, Weldon points out, loves best the person who attends to her needs the most. That said, because the characters are so unlikeable (or very uncomfortably likeable), it's a hard novel to get into. Many people will be put off by the rather cavalier way mothers in three generations of this family leave their young children in the primary care of others. The mothers, simply put, aren't "motherly." As to the people who claimed that the ending was a cop-out...uh, didn't you read the very beginning of the book? It was building all along...

An engaging novel chockfull with fascinating subplots

"When the maid is mistaken for the mistress it is time for the mistress to ask the maid to leave." Agnieszka comes to live with Martyn and Hattie as an au pair. The family dynamic changes, bit by bit, shifting the daily domestic and child-rearing responsibilities from Hattie to Agnieszka. Kitty, at six months of age, adores her new au pair. Hattie, an editor with a book publisher, looks at Agnieska as a Godsend; Hattie can go back to work after a six-month leave of absence rather than the full-year leave she initially requested. Fay Weldon has woven countless subplots, offering the reader insight into political and social mores, and the complex relationships between family members and friends. As the narrator is Hattie's grandmother, Francis Watt, we see another generation's views on all of these issues, as well as family history. Deceit is a quality known by many. It is a quality that Weldon weaves into her tale, offering the reader brief glimpses of the truth, while daring you to believe that the truth could be so devious. Will Martyn and Hattie do anything to keep Agnieszka, even in the face of the Immigration Service? Agnieszka originally states that she's from Poland. She is actually from the Ukraine: "two miles to the west and everything would be different for us." Hattie's career in book publishing has taken a sudden turn in the road. A man with Tourette's Syndrome has a book he wants published by Hattie's firm. The major objection to this book is the suggested yet unprintable title. Another question arises when the author shows up unannounced in the lobby of Hattie's office. Expecting him to begin yelling streams of profanity, the office workers don't know what to do with him. Hattie suggests that he doesn't even have Tourette's Syndrome; he is just writing from the perspective of a man who does. There are many gems in SHE MAY NOT LEAVE. Weldon has given the reader countless opportunities to anticipate the final result. It's so subtle and so polished, yet so innocent. Weldon totally sneaks up on you! --- Reviewed by Marge Fletcher