cover image Closing

Closing

Zoe Fairbairns. Dutton Books, $19.95 (463pp) ISBN 978-0-525-24642-8

Organized around the lives of four women who participate in a high-pressure course in salesmanship, this is a tightly written, expertly plotted and highly intelligent novel by the British author of Benefits and Here Today. Fairbanks focuses on how the lives of her heroines, including their relationships with husbands and lovers, are changed, subtly or convulsively, by the aggressive program. There's Daphne, the course's trainer and something of a sergeant major, who has little time for a private life; Gina, an ambitious know-it-all who tries to be career woman, wife and mother simultaneously but falls prey to a female competitor's violence; Ann, a housewife into whose life come unexpected excitements and challenges; and Teresa, owner of a feminist magazine who has a hard time steering her way between ``rocks of finance and whirlpools of ideology.'' Fairbanks speaks directly and perceptively to the condition of contemporary women torn by the conflicting demands of career and confusing psychosocial status. She's a novelist to be reckoned with. (August)