Starlady Sandra is a television astronomer, wife, mother, public woman, private mess, and apparently not content to remain politely arranged inside anyone else’s idea of sense.

When she abandons her barrister husband and runs off with the leader of a band, the novel, and her life, become a sharp little detonation of marriage, fantasy, female appetite, motherhood, ambition, and the stories women are expected to keep tidy.

Weldon is very good at making domestic life feel like a rigged experiment: funny, bitter, agile, and slightly radioactive. This is a novel about wanting more, then discovering that “more” is not freedom so much as another room with worse lighting. For readers who like their feminist fiction clever, unsentimental, sexually alert, and full of women behaving inconveniently on purpose.

First American edition hardback, published by Viking Penguin, 1989. Dust jacket present. Ex-library copy with library stamp/markings to copyright page and protective cover remnants/handling wear visible. Jacket has edge wear, rubbing, and creasing, especially around the spine and corners. Pages clean and readable.