Flanagan, Mary

(US, 1943– )

Flanagan moved to Britain in 1969 and her fiction uses both American and European settings. She is best known for her short stories; begin with Bad Girls (1984) which offers an array of mad, bored, unhappy women—mostly from wealthy backgrounds. Flanagan is particularly interested in bored middle-class wives and mothers seeking diversion. Sex is central to many of her stories, as it is to her 1997 novel Adèle, which describes the attempt of present day feminists to unearth the story of Adèle, sexually magnetic and physically extraordinary wild child, kept in 1930s Paris by a gynaecologist for sexual investigation, experimentation, and prostitution. The story is set in motion by the theft of mummified sexual organs from the British Museum. The Blue Woman (1994) is a second collection of whimsical and bizarre stories.

Fay Weldon, Jane Gardam, Lesley Glaister  JR