Synopses & Reviews
“Perfectly turned works . . . A grand feat, and something to smile about.” — Elissa Schappell,
Vanity Fair“Landmark.” — Vogue
Margaret Drabbles novels have illuminated the past fifty years, especially the changing lives of women, like no others. Yet her short fiction, never before collected, has its own unique brilliance. In stories that are perceptive, sharp, and funny she explores marriage, female friendships, the tourist abroad, love affairs with houses, peace demonstrations, gin and tonics, and displays penetrating evocations of character and place, wide-ranging curiosity, and a sense of irony. This collection is a wonderful recapitulation of a masterly career.
“[These] glimmer with the irony, lyricism, moral vision, and amplitude we associate with Drabbles novels.” — New York Times Book Review
“Woman in her essence: complicated, contradictory, and courageous . . . Magic that will stay with us.” — San Francisco Chronicle
MARGARET DRABBLE is the author of the novels The Seven Sisters, The Peppered Moth, and The Needles Eye, among other books. For her contributions to contemporary English literature, she was made a Dame of the British Empire in 2008.
Review
"Smooth, reflective prose . . . Drabble's fans will savor these bite-sized examples of her humane intelligence."
—Kirkus Reviews
Review
“Perfectly turned works ... A grand feat, and something to smile about.”
—Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair
“[These] glimmer with the irony, lyricism, moral vision, and amplitude we associate with Drabbles novels.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Woman in her essence: complicated, contradictory, and courageous ... Magic that will stay with us.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
"Show[s] a mastery of the [short-story] form ... Brilliantly dramatic ... Prick these moody and introspective characters, and they do bleed."
—All Things Considered
"Fascinating companions to ... Drabbles larger canon ... [They] are so well-crafted, so illustrative of Drabbles keen eye and literary talent, that their excellence is what shines through, and rightfully so."
—Portland Oregonian
"Landmark. A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman documents the changing lives of w
—Vogue
"A fastidious chronicler of the vagaries of womens lives in England since the early nineteen-sixties ... Drabble is one of the most versatile and accomplished writers of her generation ... A sympathetic clear-mindedness characterizes Drabbles short fiction."
—Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker
"These stories reveal a great deal about a writer best known for her novels ... We see Drabble honing her powerful eye for details and their meanings."
—Los Angeles Times
"Even those who have never dabbled in Drabble will enjoy this ... With her snappy pacing and signature sense of irony, Drabble gives us a sense of the various feminist growing pains progressive women have experienced over the past 50 years, and articulates some of the frustrations and triumphs were still experiencing today."
—Bust
Review
PRAISE FOR MARGARET DRABBLE
"Reading Margaret Drabble's novels has become something of a rite of passage."-The Washington Post
"As meticulous as Jane Austen, and as deadly as Evelyn Waugh." -Los Angeles Times
PRAISE FOR THE SEVEN SISTERS
"With humor, compassion and ironic detachment, Margaret Drabble has created a memorable portrait of an older woman who is constructing a new life with renewed energy and increased self-knowledge."-Chicago Tribune (Favorite Book of 2002)
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"With her usual deftness and clarity, Drabble crosses cultures and centuries...engrossing and provocative"
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"A deliciously evocative tale of palace intrigue...one of the most inventive works of fiction in recent memory"
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"Drabble's plain narrative tenaciousness gives her writing transparency and fire."
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"Drabble's tale is a love song to literature, an illustration as to how reader and subject become intertwined."
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"Editor's Choice"
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PRAISE FOR
THE RED QUEEN"Drabble has written a moving tale of fate, moral responsibility and love."--San Francisco Chronicle
"Drabble's tale is a quiet love song to literature, an illustration as to how reader and subject become intertwined. As Yeats wrote, how can we know the dancer from the dance?"--Chicago Tribune
"An 18th-century Korean princess tells her harrowing life story in the lyrical first half of Drabble's lovely, intelligent 16th novel. A-." - Entertainment Weekly
Review
PRAISE FOR
THE PEPPERED MOTH"One of the more absorbing novels I have read in a long time, both for its sheer storytelling ability and for its powers of imaginative conjecture."--The New York Times Book Review
"This book fairly bounces. Its zest derives in large part from the perfectly sustained tone, which expresses humor without poking fun, and deep regret without sentimentality."--The Atlantic Monthly
PRAISE FOR THE WITCH OF EXMOOR
"Part social satire, part thriller, and entirely clever."--Elle
"Part mystery, part fairy tale . . . with a wicked, dead-on wit."--People
Review
"Drabble's nuanced and revealing jigsaw of vivid memories, little-known facts, and astute observations is both mind-expanding and mood-elevating."
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"A charming homage...Readers unafraid of doing some extra work will be richly rewarded."
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"...a fascinating journey...Drabble charms...One of the true pleasures of the book is following Drabble's insatiable curiosity, her scholarly zeal for research and love of knowledge for the sake of knowledge to see where she ends up."
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PRAISE FOR MARGARET DRABBLE"Reading Margaret Drabbles novels has become something of a rite of passage . . . Sharply observed, exquisitely companionable tales of women of a certain age and class, educated, egocentric, strong, unlucky in love."THE WASHINGTON POST"As meticulous as Jane Austen, and as deadly as Evelyn Waugh."LOS ANGELES TIMES
Review
"In this playful, gently biting, multifaceted story, a self-dramatizing doyenne of gender studies and a reticent marine biologist--both fantastically introspective and self-aware--review salient points of their pasts when they're reunited in the seaside town where they met as children."
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"Told from alternating his-and-her perspectives, this is a thought-provoking tale, glinting with elegiac reflections on aging and the power that time, place, and serendipity exert over our destinies."
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"There are few pleasures more mentally invigorating than astringently witty and wise satirical fiction. Drabble is a master of the form, creating audacious women characters of withering insight and triumphant sensuality...But for all its dark knowledge, oceanic psychology, and spiny social critique, Drabble's novel is as scintillating as a sunny day onboard a fast-moving sailboat on the life-sustaining sea." (Starred and boxed)
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"A salty, satirical novel awash with oceanic metaphors." (summer Books Round-up)
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"[Drabble] brilliantly captures both the austerity of live in post-war Britain and a childhood that feels real without being either overly precocious or nostalgic."
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"Drabble is adept at lyric metaphor as well as social satire; in Lady, she manages to be both lavish and droll. A-"
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"An intense melancholy pervades the latest novel from the prolific and always thoughtful Drabble...[She] mixes sociology, psychology and philosophy--not to mention marine biology--into what is at heart a bittersweet autumnal romance. Emotionally reflective and intellectually invigorating." (Starred review)
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"The language of science mixes with that of religion to produce a holistic, humanistic resolution worthy of that great poet Wordsworth...[Drabble] has created a true thing of beauty."
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"In her 18th novel, Margaret Drabble appears to be in her element...The Sea Lady is the work of a quicksilver, fathom-deep intelligence ducking and diving wittily into matters of the head and heart."
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"Drabble's prickly sensibility is in fine form in 'The Sea Lady.'"
Review
"Ailsa is perhaps the most appealing protagonist among the mature and accomplished women Drabble has featured in her numerous earlier novels...Drabble's vivid, mesmerizing sea-life imagery, which pervades her rendering of Humphrey's attraction to the underwater world, is arguably the novel's strongest feature."
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"In a novel that goes well beyond love story, Drabble examines the power of memory."
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"The bold latest from the ever-inventive Drabble...Nothing as simple as a love story, this prismatic novel shines as a faceted portrait of England's changing mores, as an ode on childhood's joys and injustices, and a primer for marine biology, complete with hermaphrodite crayfish and fossils of sea lilies. Seductive as the tides, it pulls the reader in."
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"A thoroughly enchanting blend of scientific erudition, social satire and domestic comedy from a novelist who continues to surprise us...The genius of [Drabble's] prose is an ability to be incisive and satiric without sticking her characters on the end of a pin the way her older sister, A.S. Byatt, does..."
Synopsis
Famed UK novelist Margaret Drabble's complete short stories
Synopsis
Margaret Drabbles novels have illuminated the past fifty years, especially the changing lives of women, like no others. Yet her short fiction has its own unique brilliance. Her penetrating evocations of character and place, her wide-ranging curiosity, her sense of irony—all are on display here, in stories that explore marriage, female friendships, the English tourist abroad, love affairs with houses, peace demonstrations, gin and tonics, cultural TV programs, in stories that are perceptive, sharp, and funny. With an introduction by the Spanish academic José Fernández that places the stories in the context of her life and her novels, this collection is a wonderful recapitulation of a masterly career.
Synopsis
With a preface written by the author especially for this edition, this is the complete collection of stories by Eudora Welty.
Including the earlier collections A Curtain of Green, The Wide Net, The Golden Apples, and The Bride of the Innisfallen, as well as previously uncollected ones, these forty-one stories demonstrate Eudora Welty's talent for writing from diverse points-of-view with “vision that is sweet by nature, always humanizing, uncannily objective, but never angry” (Washington Post).
Synopsis
Barbara Halliwell, on a grant at Oxford, receives an unexpected package-a memoir by a Korean crown princess, written more than two hundred years ago. A highly appropriate gift for her impending trip to Seoul. But from whom?
The story she avidly reads on the plane turns out to be one of great intrigue as well as tragedy. The Crown Princess Hyegyong recounts in extraordinary detail the ways of the Korean court and confesses the family dramas that left her childless and her husband dead by his own hand. Perhaps it is the loss of a child that resonates so deeply with Barbara . . . but she has little time to think of such things, she has just arrived in Korea.
She meets a certain Dr. Oo, and to her surprise and delight he offers to guide her to some of the haunts of the crown princess. As she explores the inner sanctums and the royal courts, Barbara begins to feel a strong affinity for everything related to the princess and her mysterious life.
After a brief, intense, and ill-fated love affair, she returns to London. Is she ensnared by the events of the past week, of the past two hundred years, or will she pick up her life where she left it? A beautifully told and ingeniously constructed novel, this is Margaret Drabble at her best.
Synopsis
From England's highly acclaimed author comes a new novel-a masterfully crafted portrait of three generations,a family strikingly similar to her own.
Synopsis
Bessie Bawtry is a young girl living in the early 1900s in Breaseborough, a mining town in South Yorkshire, England. Unusually gifted, she longs to escape a life burdened by unquestioned tradition. She studies patiently, dreaming of the day when she will take the entrance exam for Cambridge and be able to leave her narrow world. A generation later, Bessie's daughter Chrissie feels a similar impulse to expand her horizons, which she in turn passes on to her own daughter.
Nearly a century later, Bessie's granddaughter, Faro Gaulden, finds herself listening to a lecture on genetics and biological determinism. She has returned to Breaseborough and wonders at the families who remained in the humble little town where Bessie grew up. Confronted with what would have been her life had her grandmother stayed, she finds herself faced with difficult questions. Is she really so different from the plain South Yorkshire locals? As she soon learns, the past has a way of reasserting itself-not unlike the peppered moth that was once thought to be nearing extinction but is now enjoying a sudden unexplained resurgence.
The Peppered Moth is a brilliantly conceived novel, full of irony, sadness, and humor.
Synopsis
In a “profoundly moving, intellectually acute” novel (Philadelphia Inquirer) that is “as meticulous as Jane Austen, as deadly as Evelyn Waugh” (Los Angeles Times), Margaret Drabble conjures up a retired writer besieged by her three grasping children in this dazzling, wickedly gothic tale.
Synopsis
Candida Wilton--a woman recently betrayed, rejected, divorced, and alienated from her three grown daughters--moves from a beautiful Georgian house in lovely Suffolk to a two-room walk-up flat in a run-down building in central London. Candida is not exactly destitute. So, is the move perversity, she wonders, a survival test, or is she punishing herself? How will she adjust to this shabby, menacing, but curiously appealing city? What can happen, at her age, to change her life? And yet, as she climbs the dingy communal staircase with her suitcases, she feels both nervous and exhilarated.
There is a relationship with a computer to which she now confides her past and her present. And friendships of sorts with other women--widows, divorced, never married, women straddled between generations. And then Candida's surprise inheritance . . .
A beautifully rendered story, this is Margaret Drabble at her novelistic best.
Synopsis
The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws is an original and brilliant work. Margaret Drabble weaves her own story into a history of games, in particular jigsaws, which have offered her and many others relief from melancholy and depression. Alongside curious facts and discoveries about jigsaw puzzles did you know that the 1929 stock market crash was followed by a boom in puzzle sales? Drabble introduces us to her beloved Auntie Phyl, and describes childhood visits to the house in Long Bennington on the Great North Road, their first trip to London together, the books they read, the jigsaws they completed. She offers penetrating sketches of her parents, her siblings, and her children; she shares her thoughts on the importance of childhood play, on art and writing, on aging and memory. And she does so with her customary intelligence, energy, and wit. This is a memoir like no other.
Synopsis
This is the story of Humphrey Clark and Ailsa Kelman, who spent a summer together as children in Ornemouth, a town by the gray North Sea. As they journey back to Ornemouth to receive honorary degrees from a new university thereHumphrey on the train, Ailsa flyingthey take stock of their lives over the past thirty years, their careers, and their shared personal entanglements. Humphrey is a successful marine biologist, happiest under water, but now retired; Ailsa, scholar and feminist, is celebrated for her pioneering studies of gender and for her gift for lucid and dramatic exposition. The memories of their lives unfold as Margaret Drabble exquisitely details the social life in England in the second half of the last century.
Synopsis
Porters reputation as one of americancas most distinguished writers rests chiefly on her superb short stories. This volume includes the collections Flowering Judas; Pale Horse, Pale Rider; and The Leaning Tower as well as four stories not available elsewhere in book form. Winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
About the Author
EUDORA WELTY (1909-2001) was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and attended the Mississippi State College for Women, the University of Wisconsin, and Columbia University (where she studied advertising). In addition to short fiction, Welty wrote novels, novellas, essays, and reviews, and was the winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction ix
Note on the Present Edition xxi
Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1
Hassans Tower 7
A Voyage to Cythera 23
Faithful Lovers 41
A Pyrrhic Victory 53
Crossing the Alps 63
The Gifts of War 85
A Success Story 103
A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman 115
Homework 141
The Merry Widow 151
The Dower House at Kellynch:
A Somerset Romance 169
The Caves of God 193
Stepping Westward:
A Topographical Tale 207