THE GHASTLY television horrorshow Big Brother may hold up a mirror to modern society, but the vapid antics of the likes of Chanelle Hayes have a surprisingly noble literary precedent. In the mid-1300s, the Renaissance humanist Giovanni Boccaccio put a group of sexually charged young Florentine noblemen and women in a house, cut off all contact with the outside world and left them to entertain themselves over the course of ten days. The result was The Decameron, a spirited, witty and often distinctly bawdy commentary on contemporary political, social and religious life. Somewhat pointedly, he dedicated it to the ladies of his time.

Clearly it would be stretching a point to say that Boccaccio was a medieval Davina McCall. But the fact remains that if you take a group of individuals, remove them from their everyday lives, add a few disconcerting events and a modicum of inconvenience, they will bond (or not), form alliances (or rivalries) and sooner or later let slip their darkest secrets. It makes for mesmerising, if not always edifying, television; and it is a cracking literary conceit.

This, then, is the premise of Fay Weldon’s new novel, The Spa Decameron. Her protagonists, all women, are a group of highflying individuals marooned in a remote country house spa without partners or children at Christmas. Lured by the promise of a “luxury” bargain break (a “mere” £5,000, the first of Weldon’s many wicked little jokes), they arrive for a festive season of pampering to instead find that the spa is running only a skeleton service.

Seasonal goodwill is at an all-time low: the gambling habits of the flamboyant owner, Lady Caroline, have caused a nasty cash-flow crisis. Worse, the weather outside is apocalyptic, none of the phones works and outside, as in Boccaccio, a deadly virus (his was the Black Death) stalks computers and human beings.

Thrown together by circumstances and a desire for perfectly trimmed cuticles, the women adopt something of a Blitz (or should that be Glitz?) spirit. They raid the kitchen for champagne and chocolate, before retiring to the whirlpool bath for some female bonding.

A confessional orgy ensues as, cocooned by bubbles and warmth, each one tells her life story. The entire gamut of the female (and in some cases transgender) experience is covered, from the cruelly exploited to the downright psychopathic. There is murder, madness, much eroticism and even some incestuous love.

Always and everywhere are men: obsessive, lustful, greedy, adored and, inevitably, loathed. This is a book whose protagonists are female, and yet the male ego has more than just a few walk-on parts: even Weldon’s steeliest feminist harbours a longing for the opposite sex. If you had to boil it down you would say that, for the ladies of Castle Spa, men are an inconvenient but necessary evil. They are the source of discord, anxiety, self-loathing, in one case a jail sentence; but there is no getting away from them. The female psyche is like a battered wife who cannot quite bring herself to give up the brute. It is a disquieting concept indeed.

Of course, the book is more sophisticated than that. Such a one-dimensional vision would be beneath a writer of the calibre of Weldon: there are always a few twists in the tale. That, plus the ever-present wit – and a gleeful appetite for vendetta. For every act of weakness, there is a corresponding one of affirmation. The narrator, Phoebe (loosely autobiographical, although aspects of Weldon’s life, such as her heart condition, spill over into the experiences of the other characters), has a dual identity, all-seeing one minute, plagued by insecurities the next. Like most women, in fact.

Weldon is famous for her clear understanding of the female condition; what makes her such a compelling writer is her ability to translate it on to the page in a format that is not only effortlessly fluid, but also immensely entertaining.

The Spa Decameron by Fay Weldon.

Quercus, £14.99; 336pp.

Buy the book at the offer price of £13.49 (inc p&p)

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