[Fay Weldon], hatcher of the famous slogan 'Go to work on an egg', was once an advertising copywriter. Designed to promote her brand of feminism, the novels and stories she has since produced carry all the trade-marks of this background. Puffball, her new book, is no exception. Its format consists of prose broken into easy little units—as if in response to some market-research survey on attention-spans. The line it pushes is the importance of eggs—this time, human ones.

Charting the tribulations of an ovum that has lodged low in the womb, the book regularly slides its narrative into the heroine's interior…. The prose teems with gynaecological vocabulary…. (p. 254)

[There are, however,] external obstacles to a peaceful parturition. One of them is Liffey's husband, whose unsatisfactory nature is held up to scorn…. A monster pack of male inadequacies, Richard rapidly emerges as a wash-out…. In Female Friends...