From bestselling author Fay Weldon comes the story of three women's enduring friendship  They first met as children in 1940s London. Thirty years later, Marjorie, Chloe, and Grace make their way through an almost unrecognizable post-war society, coping with husbands, children, parents, and the messy business of life.       Trapped by her dependency on her tormented screenwriter husband, Chloe finds a novel way of liberating herself from his sexual and domestic oppression. Marjorie, a childless BBC director, is overwhelmed with guilt upon seeing her mother, the woman who abandoned her thirty years earlier, dying in a hospital bed. And egocentric Grace, who lives with a much younger man, her husband having passed away, sacrifices the wellbeing of her son upon the altar of pleasure.   A smart, prescient novel that speaks for a generation of women struggling to find their place in a male-dominated world, Female Friends is a masterwork from a storyteller at the top of her game.