Synopses & Reviews
“An absorbing achievement .º.º. A nimble, entertaining literary homage, but it is also, chillingly, what James would have called ‘the real thing.”—
New York Times Book Review
Cynthia Ozick is a literary treasure. In her sixth novel, she retraces Henry Jamess The Ambassadors and delivers a brilliant, utterly new American classic.
At the center of the story is Bea Nightingale, a fiftyish divorced schoolteacher whose life has been on hold during the many years since her brief marriage. When her estranged, difficult brother asks her to travel to Europe to retrieve a nephew she barely knows, she becomes entangled in the lives of his family. Over the course of a few months she travels from New York to Paris to Hollywood, aiding and abetting her nephew and niece while waging a war of letters with her brother, and finally facing her ex-husband to shake off his lingering sneers from decades past. As she inadvertently wreaks havoc in their lives, every one of them is irrevocably changed.
“Raucous, funny, ferocious, and tragic. A literary master, as James was, Ozick makes all those qualities fit together seamlessly, and with heartbreaking effect.”—Philadelphia Inquirer
“Dazzling, even masterful.”—Entertainment Weekly
Review
Praise for Margaret Drabble: "Reading a Margaret Drabble novel has always been like cozying up with a cup of hot tea by a gas fire with a dull English winter rain misting the window, and contemplating the story of one's own life."
—The New York Times "As meticulous as Jane Austen, and as deadly as Evelyn Waugh."
—Los Angeles Times "The deft commingling of the sentimental and the matter-of-fact is characteristic of writer Margaret Drabble…Drabble is one of the most versatile and accomplished writers of her generation."
—Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker "Reading Margaret Drabble's 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."
—Washington Post "Drabble's fiction has achieved a panoramic vision of contemporary life."
—Chicago Tribune "What distinguishes Drabble's fiction from the commonplace is that, like Doris Lessing's early work, it nails femaleness. Drabble's women bleed, some metaphorically, but not all."
—San Francisco Chronicle "A superb novelist."
—The Dallas Morning News
Review
"Achingly wise…Lamenting and steely, gentled by compassion. Admirers of Marilynne Robinson will find themselves very much at home in this book." —
Wall Street Journal "Moving and meditative...I found a kind of somber bravery in the story of this unwavering, intelligent woman and her guileless and beautiful child. I'm so glad that Margaret Drabble, like her characters, just decided to keep on going." —Meg Wolitzer, NPR.org
"The Pure Gold Baby is a closely observed group portrait of female friends, a patient insight into the joys and pains of motherhood, and an image of how society has changed and how it has not." —Harper's "The Pure Gold Baby is an unexpected gift from a great author. How do we treat the child who walks among us in a different way than most? In Margaret Drabble's hands the answer is with a depth of empathy few master." —Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones "Margaret Drabble has written a compelling portrait of a mother whose care for her disabled child unfolds against a world of shifting mores. This is a panoramic survey of the way social attitudes toward difference have shifted--of what has been gained and of what has been lost. It is above all a humbling portrait of time, a stern reminder that what we know to be true today may well be untrue tomorrow. It is written with acuity, wisdom, and grace." —Andrew Solomon, author of Far From the Tree "This is an intimate look at a small family and its circle, told with wit, sensitivity, and deft knowledge of the household details of its setting. Drabble, the distinguished author of more than two dozen novels (e.g., The Radiant Way; The Seven Sisters) and works of nonfiction (The Oxford Companion to English Literature), is a masterly storyteller and a preeminent chronicler of modern life...Readers who yearn for well-crafted fiction full of thoughtful ideas and observations should welcome this heartily."
- Library Journal, Starred Review
"Drabble (A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman, 2011, etc.) enfolds the moving personal story of a single mothers care for her mentally disabled daughter within a somber narrative of aging families and declining social optimism…The Victorian explorer David Livingstone, William Wordsworths poetry, Auguste Rodins sculpture and Marcel Prousts novels all play a part in Drabbles deeply intellectual, though never pretentious consideration of our intricate connections and obligations to others. Thoughtful and provocative, written with the authors customary intelligence and quiet passion."
- Kirkus
"Dame of the British Empire Drabble is in peak form in this marvelously dexterous, tartly funny, and commanding novel of moral failings and womens quandaries, brilliantly infusing penetrating social critique with stinging irony as she considers what life makes of us and what we make of life... Given Drabbles standing as one of the giants of world literature, elevated attention will be paid to her first novel since The Sea Lady (2007)."
-- Booklist, Starred Review
"Having announced in 2009 that she would stop writing fiction for fear of repeating herself, Drabble has, thankfully, had a change of heart. Here she offers a wrenching but clear-eyed look at the responsibilities of motherhood. Pregnant owing to an affair with a married professor, graduate student Jessica Speight gives birth to golden, glowy Anna. It soon becomes apparent that Anna will never be a normal child, and both character and reader must adjust to a different understanding of parenting."
-- Library Journal, "Barbara's Picks" Pre-Pub Alert
Praise for Margaret Drabble: "Reading a Margaret Drabble novel has always been like cozying up with a cup of hot tea by a gas fire with a dull English winter rain misting the window, and contemplating the story of one's own life."
—The New York Times "As meticulous as Jane Austen, and as deadly as Evelyn Waugh."
—Los Angeles Times "The deft commingling of the sentimental and the matter-of-fact is characteristic of writer Margaret Drabble…Drabble is one of the most versatile and accomplished writers of her generation."
—Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker "Reading Margaret Drabble's 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."
—Washington Post "Drabble's fiction has achieved a panoramic vision of contemporary life."
—Chicago Tribune "What distinguishes Drabble's fiction from the commonplace is that, like Doris Lessing's early work, it nails femaleness. Drabble's women bleed, some metaphorically, but not all."
—San Francisco Chronicle "A superb novelist."
—The Dallas Morning News
Review
"Achingly wise…Lamenting and steely, gentled by compassion. Admirers of Marilynne Robinson will find themselves very much at home in this book." —
Wall Street Journal "Moving and meditative...I found a kind of somber bravery in the story of this unwavering, intelligent woman and her guileless and beautiful child. I'm so glad that Margaret Drabble, like her characters, just decided to keep on going." —Meg Wolitzer, NPR's
All Things Considered "Feelings of age, of history, and of hindsight permeate the book...The novels true preoccupation is social history, and it powerfully evokes the changes of recent decades." —
The New Yorker "The Pure Gold Baby is a closely observed group portrait of female friends, a patient insight into the joys and pains of motherhood, and an image of how society has changed and how it has not." —Harper's "It is a testament to the intensity and skill of Drabbles writing that part of this novels suspense has to do with our waiting for definitions, diagnoses, and certainties that are never offered; and that part of our satisfaction lies in our acceptance that they cannot be…These are characteristic Drabble maneuvers: to take us all the way to death and madness and then back, to life defiant and friendship itself defying time by living fully within it." —The New York Review of Books
"Insightful and wise, The Pure Gold Baby chronicles the deep challenges of parenting under any circumstances — yet it also captures the almost unbearable vulnerability of being human." —Boston Globe
"The Pure Gold Baby is as deep as it is wide: resonant, recursive and contemplative." —The Kansas City Star "The Pure Gold Baby is an unexpected gift from a great author. How do we treat the child who walks among us in a different way than most? In Margaret Drabble's hands the answer is with a depth of empathy few master." —Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones "Margaret Drabble has written a compelling portrait of a mother whose care for her disabled child unfolds against a world of shifting mores. This is a panoramic survey of the way social attitudes toward difference have shifted--of what has been gained and of what has been lost. It is above all a humbling portrait of time, a stern reminder that what we know to be true today may well be untrue tomorrow. It is written with acuity, wisdom, and grace." —Andrew Solomon, author of Far From the Tree "An intimate look at a small family and its circle, told with wit, sensitivity, and deft knowledge of the household details of its setting...[Drabble] is a masterly storyteller and a preeminent chronicler of modern life...Readers who yearn for well-crafted fiction full of thoughtful ideas and observations should welcome this heartily." —Library Journal (starred review) "[A] deeply intellectual, though never pretentious consideration of our intricate connections and obligations to others. Thoughtful and provocative, written with the authors customary intelligence and quiet passion." —Kirkus "Dame of the British Empire Drabble is in peak form in this marvelously dexterous, tartly funny, and commanding novel of moral failings and womens quandaries, brilliantly infusing penetrating social critique with stinging irony as she considers what life makes of us and what we make of life... Given Drabbles standing as one of the giants of world literature, elevated attention will be paid to her first novel since The Sea Lady (2007)." —Booklist (starred review)
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)
Review
"With her usual deftness and clarity, Drabble crosses cultures and centuries...engrossing and provocative"
Review
"A deliciously evocative tale of palace intrigue...one of the most inventive works of fiction in recent memory"
Review
"Drabble's plain narrative tenaciousness gives her writing transparency and fire."
Review
"Drabble's tale is a love song to literature, an illustration as to how reader and subject become intertwined."
Review
"Editor's Choice"
Review
"Ozick’s heady fiction springs from her deep critical involvement in literature, especially her fascination with Henry James, which emboldened her to lift the plot of his masterpiece, The Ambassadors, and recast it in a taut and flaying novel that is utterly her own….Ozick’s dramatic inquiry into the malignance of betrayal; exile literal and emotional; the many tentacles of anti-Semitism; and the balm and aberrance of artistic obsession is brilliantly nuanced and profoundly disquieting."--
Booklist, starred review From Kirkus :
Julian Nachtigall, son of a tyrannical and imperious businessman, has gone to Paris but has shown no interest in returning home. While there, he links up with Lili, a Romanian expat about ten years his senior. Marvin, the father, is furious that Julian wants to waste his life playing around in nonserious matters (e.g., writing essays and observations of French life), so he sends his sister Bea (who’s Anglicized her name to Nightingale) to Paris to bring him to his senses as well as bring him home. Bea teaches English to high-school thugs who mock her love of Wordsworth and Keats, and Marvin has always held her in contempt for what in his eyes is her impractical and useless profession. Bea is complicit in tricking Marvin by sending Julian’s sister, Iris, to Paris instead. Iris is the apple of Marvin’s eye, a graduate student in chemistry and a promising scientist—in other words, all that Julian is not. But unbeknownst to Marvin, Iris is also happy to escape the imperatives of her authoritarian and oppressive father, so she goes to Paris more in the belief that she will stay there rather than bring her brother back home to California. Through flashbacks we learn of Bea’s unhappy and brief marriage to Leo Coopersmith, a composer who has pretensions of being the next Mahler, though he winds up something of a Hollywood hack, composing music for cartoons. We also meet Marvin’s long-suffering and brow-beaten wife, Margaret, whose neurasthenia is directly attributable to her husband’s iron-fisted despotism. Ozick brilliantly weaves together the multiple strands of her narrative through letters, flashbacks and Jamesian observations of social behavior.
This is superb, dazzling fiction. Ozick richly observes and lovingly crafts each character, and every sentence is a tribute to her masterful command of language.
*Starred Review* An extraordinary novel, loosely based on The Ambassadors—but Ozick (Dictation, 2008, etc.) manages to out-James the master himself.
"Cynthia Ozick is one of America’s greatest living writers... The "leaving" — of parents, of a spouse, of a child, of a family, of a country, of a continent, of all we thought our lives were for — follows every character through this brilliant story of how we mark others without knowing it, revealing how we are all tattooed by other people’s ambitions." - - Dara Horn, The Forward
"It is pure pleasure to encounter Cynthia Ozick: a morally brilliant comic master whose plots keep the pages turning and whose every sentence sings. Ozick's latest novel is billed as a 'photographic negative' of Henry James' The Ambassadors, with the same plot and the opposite meaning. Readers put off by James' baroque style have nothing to fear; part of Ozick's inversion of James is the crisp bite of her prose, and the story, ultimately, is fully hers." - Ms. Magazine
"...her vision of Europe and its tragic history is profound; and Lili is a creation of stunning depth. It is not Jamesian, it is Ozickian." -- Richard Eder, Boston Globe
"Ozick has achieved another success. Henry James -- the master -- would not be displeased." -- Miami Herald
"This is vintage Ozick; she is, perhaps, our most classical contemporary novelist, with a strong sense of literary heritage." -- LA Times
Foreign Bodies, by Cynthia Ozick (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; $26). Bea Nightingale, a teacher in the Bronx in the nineteen-fifties, is in a rut when her peevish brother entreats her to retrieve his son and daughter from Paris, where they sought refuge from his oppressive ways. Ozick’s taut, sparkling novel is billed as a retelling of Henry James’s "The Ambassadors," and she transforms James’s cultivated Europe into a "scarred and exhausted" landscape teeming with the ghosts of war. Bea is a reluctant ambassador: at first she strives to do her brother’s bidding, but soon the "romantic agony" of Paris awakens feelings she has long kept subdued. Embroiled in a family drama, careful Bea meddles where once she stood idle, and she confronts a vexing paradox: "how hard it is to change one’s life" and "how terrifyingly simple to change the lives of others." -- The New Yorker
"What makes this novel such an absorbing achievement is not so much its slanted replications of the story line of 'The Ambassadors'...but the witty, fierce way in which it goes about upending the whole theme and meaning and stylistic manner of its revered precurser....'Foreign Bodies' is a nimble, entertaining literary homage, but it is also, chillingly, what James would have called 'the real thing.'" - The New York Times Book Review
Four out of four stars:
"Who would dare to rewrite Henry James? Ozick proves up to the task, recasting The Ambassadors with Jewish Americans in post-war Paris—a city of displaced, battered souls. Asked by her brother to retrieve his errant son Julian from France, divorcée Beatrice acquiesces and becomes entangled in a web of deceptions. She’s like King Midas in reverse: All she touches turns to ash. A profound sadness lies just beneath the polished prose of this affecting tale." – S. C. - People Magazine
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."
Review
"A charming homage...Readers unafraid of doing some extra work will be richly rewarded."
Review
"...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."
Review
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."
Review
"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."
Review
"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)
Review
"A salty, satirical novel awash with oceanic metaphors." (summer Books Round-up)
Review
"[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."
Review
"Drabble is adept at lyric metaphor as well as social satire; in Lady, she manages to be both lavish and droll. A-"
Review
"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)
Review
"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."
Review
"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."
Review
"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."
Review
"In a novel that goes well beyond love story, Drabble examines the power of memory."
Review
"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."
Review
"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
The first new novel in five years from "one of the most versatile and accomplished writers of her generation" (Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker)
Synopsis
Jessica Speight, a young anthropology student in 1960s London, is at the beginning of a promising academic career when an affair with her married professor turns her into a single mother. Anna is a pure gold baby with a delightful sunny nature. But as it becomes clear that Anna will not be a normal child, the book circles questions of responsibility, potential, even age, with Margaret Drabbles characteristic intelligence, sympathy, and wit.
Drabble once wrote, “Family life itself, that safest, most traditional, most approved of female choices, is not a sanctuary; it is, perpetually, a dangerous place.” Told from the point of view of the group of mothers who surround Jess, The Pure Gold Baby is a brilliant, prismatic novel that takes us into that place with satiric verve, trenchant commentary, and a movingly intimate story of the unexpected transformations at the heart of motherhood.
Synopsis
"Achingly wise . . . Admirers of Marilynne Robinson will find themselves very much at home in this book." —Wall Street Journal Jessica Speight, an anthropologist in 1960s London, is at the beginning of a promising academic career when an affair leaves her a single mother. Anna is delightful—a pure gold baby. But as it becomes clear that Anna is not a normal child, the book circles questions of responsibility, potential, even age, with Margaret Drabble’s characteristic intelligence and wit. Told from the point of view of Jess's fellow mothers, The Pure Gold Baby is a movingly intimate look at the unexpected transformations at the heart of motherhood.
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
By the summer of 1952, Beatrice Nightingale had taught school in New York City for 24 years, had been divorced from her Hollywood-composer husband for some 20 of those years, and had been estranged from her brother for nearly her entire life. She had lived in the same small apartment since her wedding, a space still dominated by her ex-husband's piano--just as her life was still defined by his decisions of so long ago. But that summer, her brother suddenly reached out to her for the first time in years, begging her to intercept and retrieve her nephew, a Paris runaway. His request propels Bea toward decisions and departures--partly well intended, partly selfish--that unravel a complex knot of siblings, spouses, exes, and Bea's extended family, in an unforgettable portrait of a middle-aged woman who finally gains the chance to escape the traps of her past. Bea travels to Paris, California, and back to New York, and the novel shifts perspective to reveal the stories of her niece, her nephew and his unexpected wife, Bea's brother and sister-in-law, and her ex-husband. The men in her life have treated her badly, as she is painfully aware, yet in finally trying to gain her own independence from them, how can she resist her own, more subtle form of counterattack and revenge?
Synopsis
In her sixth novel, Cynthia Ozick retells the story of Henry Jamess The Ambassadors as a photographic negative, retaining the plot but reversing the meaning.
Foreign Bodies transforms Henry Jamess prototype into a brilliant, utterly original, new American classic. At the core of the story is Bea Nightingale, a fiftyish divorced schoolteacher whose life has been on hold during the many years since her brief marriage. When her estranged, difficult brother asks her to leave New York for Paris to retrieve a nephew she barely knows, she becomes entangled in the lives of her brothers family and even, after so long, her ex-husband. Every one of them is irrevocably changed by the events of just a few months in that fateful year. Traveling from New York to Paris to Hollywood, aiding and abetting her nephew and niece while waging a war of letters with her brother, facing her ex-husband and finally shaking off his lingering sneers from decades past, Bea Nightingale is a newly liberated divorcee who inadvertently wreaks havoc on the very people she tries to help.
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
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
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.
About the Author
Author of numerous acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, CYNTHIA OZICK is a recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Man Booker International Prize. Her writing has appeared in The New Republic, Harper's, and elsewhere. She lives in New York.