heavenali

Having decided to read Margaret Drabble novels in 2024, I have already failed to review one of them. In January I read A Summer Bird Cage and The Garrick Year, but I didn’t manage to get anything written about The Garrick Year, even though I really loved it. I plan to read at least one Drabble book a month – but more is permitted – and of course I am also allowed to stop whenever I want, the only rule I have applied to this really, is that there are no rules. So I pulled a few thoughts together about The Garrick Year for my month in review post, and that had to suffice. 

So, I recently pulled The Millstone from my shelves, a slim little old penguin I have had for years. I read it quickly over a couple of days, the kind of book you don’t want to finish. I thought it was absolutely brilliant, surprisingly poignant without resorting to sentimentality or stereotyping. I was determined to find something to say about this novel, I know it’s one many other readers have enjoyed. 

The Millstone is a beautifully tender novel of feminism and motherhood, set and written in the 60s, a time, when so much was changing – but change is slow, and attitudes don’t always keep pace with what is happening in society. The novel is narrated by Rosamund Stacey, a young academic woman who is quite introspective, analysing everything and overthinking things a bit. To her it seems that everyone else is having sex and being rather relaxed about it, but typically she has not been so relaxed, and has somehow managed to give her friends and acquaintances the impression that she is as sexually active as they are, while in reality she just has a series of platonic male friends, who each think she is sleeping with another. 

“I did not realise the dreadful facts of life. I did not know that a pattern forms before we are aware of it, and that what we think we make becomes a rigid prison making us.”

Rosamund is living alone as the novel opens in her parents’ flat, a large flat in a rather nice area of London close to Harley Street and Regents Park – she acknowledges that this makes her appear far richer than she is. Her parents, idealistic, left leaning academic types are away in Africa – they refuse to profit from their empty flat so allow Rosamund to stay there rent free. Rosamund might be unworldly, but she is fiercely intelligent – studying towards a Phd as the novel begins, taking on the tutoring of four students as well, to help make ends meet. Later in the novel there is an acknowledgement from Drabble through the voice of Rosamund that her subsequent experiences differ to those of some other young women in similar positions, due to her address, it gives her an aura of respectability – as does her accent no doubt.

Rosamund meets George, a BBC employee who can be heard regularly on the radio. She likes him, and has a one night stand with him, surprising herself with how intensely she feels about him afterwards. However, she says nothing and lets him walk away from her. 

“I look back now with some anguish to each touch and glance, to every changing conjunction of limbs and heads and hands. I have lived it over every day for so long now that I am in danger of forgetting the true shape of how it was, because each time I go over it I wish that I had given a little more here or there, or at the very least said what was in my heart, so that he could have known how much it meant to me. But I was incapable, even when happy, of exposing myself thus far.”

Soon afterwards Rosamund discovers she is pregnant, she is astonished to find herself in this predicament – and her initial thoughts turn to abortion. With a horror of backstreet abortionists she buys a large bottle of gin and plans a hot bath. Her plans are thwarted when three friends descend on her and proceed to drink the gin, all of which gives Rosamund a chance to think again. Having decided to keep her baby after all, Rosamund confides in a few of her closest friends, who all think she is pretty mad. 

Rosamund continues her studies, and her teaching – eventually she has to consult a doctor, visit the antenatal clinic and decide who to tell. She decides not to contact George, and also decides not to tell her parents, they are out of harm’s way in Africa, she will deal with them later, she waits months to tell her sister and decides not to tell her brother who she rarely sees anyway. This behaviour, all seems typical of Rosamund – she is very independent, but doesn’t go looking for arguments or conflict. 

The majority of the novel charts Rosamund’s pregnancy, and the first nine months or so of her subsequent motherhood. The sexual revolution may well be under way but, as Rosamund is aware, illegitimacy is still very frowned upon. On a couple of occasions she encounters medical professionals who insist upon calling her Mrs Stacey – and when she corrects them is informed, somewhat stiffly, that the title is a courtesy. 

Rosamund is a rather delightful companion, she is witty and intelligent, a little naive, but endearingly so – but it is in the later relationship with her baby that this novel really excels. It is something the novel has in common with The Garrick Year, as in that novel, I noted how beautifully Drabble manages to convey the relationship between a young mother and her tiny children.  Here the child is even younger – but it is in this relationship that Rosamund is to find true joy, a joy that is palpable even to those of us who aren’t mothers. 

The Millstone is a wonderfully touching novel, thought provoking and surprisingly compelling, my book group will also be reading it in April. I am definitely enjoying my Drabble reading so far – and I am forming quite a Drabble tbr – my mum found another three for me the other day in a charity shop. I suspect this one might remain a firm favourite however. 

My first post of 2024 – It suddenly felt like a long time since my last post, my twelve books of 2023. It’s perhaps only about ten days but I had intended to start my year of blogging a little sooner. 

At the end of the year I decided I would spend 2024 reading the novels and short stories of Margaret Drabble. I doubt very much I will read them all, but I am aiming initially for one a month and I am starting to read chronologically. So, I began my 2024 reading with A Summer Bird-Cage. 

A Summer Bird-Cage was Margaret Drabble’s first novel, published in 1963 and as a debut novel it is really rather impressive. I had wondered about the title, I suspected it was a quote but I didn’t know where from, but according to Wikipoedia it is a quote from a play by John Webster called The White Devil. 

“Tis just like a summer bird-cage in a garden: the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds within despair and are in a consumption for fear they shall never get out.”

The novel is not a plot driven piece at all, it is much more about character and the relationships between various characters, in particular that between two sisters, Sarah and Louise. Here Drabble paints a portrait of a complex fractious relationship between these two sisters, Sarah the narrator is the younger sister. Once, when she was a young child she had adored her older sister, waited anxiously for her to arrive home from boarding school, proud of her sister’s beauty and elegance. However, that wasn’t to last, as Louise had grown older she had developed into a cool, proud beauty, used to attention but quick to shrug off her younger sister.

“…there had been a time when, happily oblivious of my own undesirability, I had pursued her and waited on her and yearned for the crumb of her company that never fell my way. This had lasted from the age of eight until I was thirteen or so: before I was eight she used to play with me quite often, and after the age of thirteen I learned at least superficially to ignore her and to get on with my own life. But the humiliating period after she had cast me off and before I learned to appear to have cast her off I remember very clearly.”

Both sisters have been well educated, they both have degrees from Oxford – this is very much a novel of the early sixties, there’s a sense of things starting to change for women. Sarah is aware that she could do all sorts of things with her life, though she has little real idea of what that might look like. She is in love with a young historian called Francis who is away at Harvard – they write letters and Sarah assumes when he returns she may at some point marry him. Women’s lives haven’t changed so very much though from that earlier generation, there is still a feeling that although women could have careers if they are clever enough, they would no doubt give all that up for a husband and home to run. 

As the novel opens Sarah is returning from Paris where she went after leaving Oxford – she’s been wasting time essentially, waiting to see what comes next. Sarah is returning home for her sister’s wedding. A wedding she is astonished is happening at all, Louise the traffic stopping beauty is marrying a rather dull, serious author called Stephen Halifax. Sarah can’t understand what Louise would see in him. Once she is back at home, Sarah remembers why she dislikes being there so much. Relations with Louise become strained almost immediately, her mother irritates her and she is itching to get away as soon as the wedding is over. 

Sarah then moves to London, gets a flat share and begins a job at the BBC, she attends a lot of parties, and everywhere people seem to be talking about Louise. Sarah starts to wonder all the more about why Louise married Stephen, little bits of gossip begin to find their way to her and there comes a time when all Sarah can do is confront Louise about what is really going on in her life. 

I suppose the bird-cage of the title refers to marriage – and it’s a striking image – there are a couple of relationships in the novel that could be explored and compared. I have very much enjoyed my first Margaret Drabble novel of the year – and I am very keen to read more soon.