One balmy evening in 1971, an unlikely group of women meet in a cramped living room in the suburbs of London. There’s Layla, a sexy, irreverent bombshell; Alice, a serious academic; Zoe, a new mother who’s frightened of her feminist-hating husband; Stephanie, a pretty, soft-spoken wife of a womanizing antiques dealer; and Nancy, newly single after leaving her no-sex-before-marriage fiance at their London youth hostel. All twenty-something, all fed up with their lives and their men, they decide to form Medusa, a feminist publishing house.
Big Girls Don’t Cry is a comedy in the classic Weldon tradition. Against the backdrop of failing families, husband swapping, and suburban tedium, Big Girls Don’t Cry chronicles five women’s attempts and failures to create a new life.