Product Description

Margaret DrabbleÂ’s affecting novel, set in London during the 1960s, about a casual love affair, an unplanned pregnancy, and one young womanÂ’s decision to become a mother.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #64292 in Books
• Published on: 1998-10-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780156006194
• Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
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Review
"...an old-fashioned comedy in the truest sense of the word. Often as meticulous as Jane Austen and as deadly as Evelyn Waugh, Drabble writes in the tradition of George Meredith...Drabble skewers the egotism of her characters and of the society they inhabit with subtle humor and elegant psychological analysis." -- Los Angeles Times

About the Author
Dame Margaret Drabble (Margaret, Lady Holroyd) DBE, (born 5 June 1939) is an English novelist, biographer and critic.

Drabble was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, as the second daughter of the advocate and novelist John F. Drabble and the teacher Kathleen Marie, née Bloor. Her elder sister is the novelist and critic A. S. Byatt and their younger sister is the art historian Helen Langdon.

After attending the Quaker boarding-school Mount School at York, where her mother was employed, Drabble received a major scholarship for Newnham College, Cambridge. She studied English and was awarded a starred double first (a grading that indicates she attained exceptionally high scores in her university degree).

She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1960, at one point serving as an understudy for Vanessa Redgrave, before leaving to pursue a literary career. Her first novel, A Summer Bird Cage, was published in 1963. She chaired the National Book League (now Booktrust) from 1980 to 1982.

Drabble was married to actor Clive Swift between 1960 and 1975; they have three children. In 1982, she married the writer and biographer Michael Holroyd (now Sir Michael); they live in London and Somerset.

Drabble was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1980 Queen's Birthday Honours, the University of Cambridge awarded her an honorary Doctorate in Letters in 2006, and she was promoted to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours.

Drabble has published seventeen novels to date. Her early novels were published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1963–87); more recently, her publishers have been Penguin and Viking. Her third novel, The Millstone (1965), brought her the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1966, and Jerusalem the Golden won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1967.

A theme of her novels is the correlation between contemporary England's society and its individual members. Her characters' tragical faults reflect the political and economical situation and the restrictiveness of conservative surroundings, making the reader aware of the dark spots of a seemingly wealthy country. Her protagonists are mostly women. The realistic portrayal of her figures often relates to Drabble's personal experiences.

Customer Reviews

This is it, and then it's over
The Waterfall remains my favorite Margaret Drabble novel, but this one uses a faster pace and even more humor. That humor comes from timing and odd observations, rather than obvious attempts at making readers laugh. For example, just before Rosamund Stacey loses her virginity, her seducer asks, "Is this all right? Are you all right, will this be all right?" Rosamund then tells us "that was it and it was over." You'll hate when this book is over. Rosamund seems like an old friend, and you'll enjoy your visit with her.

Humurous portrait of Londoner sex revolution in the 1960s
This was my first Margaret Drabble and I was pleasantly surprised at the cutting but subtle satire of English manners of the 1960s. The theme itself -- a single woman's decision to have a child without a husband -- was rather in keeping with the sexual revolution brought about in the 1960s in Western Europe. The narration is light and engaging, in keeping with the best of the traditional English social satirists from Austen to Pym. For my taste the books loses momentum in the last quarter, but it is still a very intelligent rendition of manners and mores.

Lucky in work, unlucky in love
This moving short novel portraits the rude awakening of a young woman, who after making love with a 'silly bugger' becomes an unmarried mother.

The dreams of youth, 'I used to be so good-natured. I used to see the best in every-one', becomes 'my growing selfishness, this was probably maturity.' 'Life would never be a simple question of self-denial again.'

There is also the chasm between the education's view of mankind and the facts of real life.
Education was the cause of 'my inability to see anything in human terms of like and dislike, love and hate, but only in terms of justice, guilt and innocence', and 'the endurance of privation is a virtue.'
However as an adult, she is confronted with 'resentments breed so near the craddle, that people should have it from birth'; 'facts of inequality, of the heart-breaking uneven hardship of the human lot. These things were as nothing compared with the bond that bind parent and child'.
As another woman in the novel says: 'I haven't the energy to go worrying about other people's children. I only have enough time to worry about myself. If I didn't put myself and mine first, they wouldn't survive.'

And finally, there is the unbearable burden of Victorian religion: 'the thought of sex freightened the life out of me.' 'If Octavia were to die, this would be a vengeance upon my sin.'

In naturally flowing prose, Margaret Drabble paints a most human portrait of innocence and struggle for (emotional) survival, youth and adulthood and the mighty marks of religion (guilt) and 'unselfish' education.

A masterly written short novel.