Fay Weldon on Fay, wittily

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AUTO DA FAY: A MEMOIR

By Fay Weldon

Grove, $25, 367 pages, illus.

REVIEWED BY MARTIN RUBIN

Fay Weldon has written two dozen novels, many of them highly diverting, but all too often madly -- and maddeningly -- over the top. Yet in her public life as an author, for example her staunch support for the hapless Salman Rushdie battling the murderous fatwa, she is a model of judiciousness and forthright common sense. And I have to say that on the two occasions in the late 1980s when I was able to spend some hours talking with her, she was not only charming but eminently sensible and markedly intelligent. So how to explain this puzzling dichotomy?

Among the many virtues of her delightful memoir, "Auto Da Fay," (and the title itself tells you something of her mischievous pleasure in the apt bending of words), is the appearance of at least some answer to this conundrum. For this memoir leaves us in no doubt that if Mrs. Weldon is a clever and educated woman (she has a degree in Economics from St. Andrews University in Scotland), she has led a disorderly life which has contained more than her fair share of -- not to mince words -- foolishness.