Here we meet nuclear scientist Defoe Desmond, a post Cold War irrelevancy, who is ineptly drawn to a youthful, wily, husband-stealing New Age journalist; three sisters named Edwina, Thomasina, and Davida, who are appalled when their increasingly wild mother finally gives their father a male heir – two years after his death; and Paula, who keeps so still waiting to hear evidence of her husband’s adultery that she does not notice she’s giving birth. 

          Weldon’s world is peopled with therapists who blithely destroy marriages and family ties, husbands and lovers whose greatest cruelty is their detachment, and clever women navigating the perils and pitfalls of domesticity.