Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"Intensely moving... this is by any standards an exceptional book" Daily Telegraph
Review
"Rich and unusual...a dazzling novel about the new century."
Literary Review
Synopsis
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 dervies in large part from the perfectly sustained tone, which expresses humor without poking fun, and deep regret without sentimentality." --The Atlantic Monthly
"The realistic novel, Drabble forcefully demonstrates, retains its ability to comment powerfully on our lives and engage our emotions deeply." --The Washington Post Book World
Synopsis
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 dervies in large part from the perfectly sustained tone, which expresses humor without poking fun, and deep regret without sentimentality." --The Atlantic Monthly
"The realistic novel, Drabble forcefully demonstrates, retains its ability to comment powerfully on our lives and engage our emotions deeply." --The Washington Post Book World
Synopsis
When circumstances compel her to start over late in her life, Candida Wilton moves from a beautiful Georgian house in lovely Suffolk to a two-room, walk-up flat in a run-down building in central London--and begins to pour her soul into a diary. 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?
In a voice that is pitch-perfect, Candida describes her health club, her social circle, and her attempts at risk-taking in her new life. She begins friendships of sorts with other women-widowed, divorced, never married, women straddled between generations. And then there is a surprise pension-fund windfall . . .
A beautifully rendered story, this is Margaret Drabble at her novelistic best.
About the Author
MARGARET DRABBLE is the author of The Sea Lady, The Seven Sisters, The Peppered Moth, and The Needle's Eye, among other novels. For her contributions to contemporary English literature, she was made a Dame of the British Empire in 2008.
Reading Group Guide
Q> In what ways has Candida been betrayed, and in what ways might she have contributed to those betrayals or have betrayed others? What circumstances, reasons, and consequences are associated with each betrayal in Candida's story? What instances of forgiveness and reconciliation are there? Q> What does Candida mean when she says, referring early on to her life in gloomy London, "in this trap is my freedom"? What images and circumstances of entrapment and imprisonment are presented in The Seven Sisters, and what images and circumstances of freedom? To what degree is freedom acquired? Q> Candida favors solitaire with real cards over computer solitaire because the former lets "you lift a card to see what might have been." Computer solitaire "won't let you follow an alternative, unchosen route, even out of curiosity." How important are unchosen routes? What alternative, unchosen routes does Candida recognize in recounting her past and confronting her present? Q> Candida remarks of her arrival in her London flat, "As a nun enters a convent in search of her god, so I entered my solitude." With which specific women does she compare herself, and what other references to "her god" occur? How might we interpret the final sentences of "Italian Journey"? "Who is that waiting on the far shore? Is it her lover or her God?" What does Candida reveal about herself with these comparisons and references? Q> Speaking of the flaw in her windowpane, Candida comments, "The flaw in the glass is always there." What flaws or distortions in seeing things occur in the novel? In what ways is Candida's vision-actual and metaphorical-flawed, limited, or distorted? What are the results, negative and positive, of distorted vision? Q> What is the significance of Virgil's Aeneid to Candida and her sense of herself and to the action and movement of the novel? In what ways do the events of Candida's life parallel the adventures of Aeneas, from exile from his homeland, through a descent into the Underworld, to the establishment of a new life in Italy? To what extent is Candida correct in concluding, "My journey, like that of Aeneas before me, was foreordained"? Q> What does Candida mean when she refers to "my other self," as opposed to "my former self"? What or who prompts the emergence of this other self? What might be the relationship between one's circumstances and the self that one recognizes as one's own and presents to the world? What might be the significance of "the ghost self" that Candida envisions in connection with the ghost orchid? Q> Drabble writes of the "shapes and patterns" of the Mediterranean, in relation to the "cold and bitter children of the cold north," as "the very shapes and patterns that are carved upon the antique heart, and you know them as your birthright." What comparisons and contrasts does she establish between the worlds of the North (Britain and Finland) and the South (Africa and Italy). In what way are the shapes and patterns of the Mediterranean Candida's birthright? What does she learn regarding the energies, dangers, and rewards of life in the two worlds? Q> How did you react to the shift from the first person of "Diary" to the third person of "Italian Journey"? What was your further reaction when you learned that Candida wrote both parts, and, later, that she also wrote "Ellen's Version"? Why does Drabble construct her novel, alternating between narrative voices, in such a way as to call into question, with each new section, the accuracy and reliability of what has gone before? Q> Of the seven Virgilians, Drabble writes, "These women keep faith with the past, they keep faith with myth and history." In what ways do the seven sisters keep that faith? To what extent do the past, myth, and history repay their faith? How important is it to candidly weigh the relation of the past personal, cultural, and historical-to the present? How successful is Candida in this regard? Q> "Submit, whispers the wizened Sibyl . . . Be still . . . Be still. Submit. You can climb no higher. This is the last height. Submit." How might we interpret these whisperings? How might we interpret the statement and question that follow? "But it is not the last height. And she cannot submit"? Where do the Sibyl's whispers originate? Q> In addition to the Seven Sisters area of London and the seven travelers in Tunis and Italy, to whom and what might the title phrase refer? What actual implied or expressed references occur in the novel? How might the most significant of these references be related to Candida and her story's primary themes? Q> What does Candida mean when she writes, at nearly the end of her account, "This is simply the place where I wait"? How do you further interpret her closing statements? "I am filled with expectation. What is it that is calling me?" and "Stretch forth your hand, I say, stretch forth your hand."
Copyright (c) 2002. Published by Harcourt, Inc. Written by Hal Hager & Associates Somerville, New Jersey