Author:Margaret Drabble
The most recent novel by Margaret Drabble, The Sea Lady tells a story of first and last love, of evolution and the ebb and flow of time that gives shape to our lives.
Humphrey and Ailsa meet as children by a grey, northern sea. Humphrey is quiet, serious - and will in time explore the sea's mysteries; Ailsa is angry, a freckled cobra ready to strike. Yet they fascinate one another and when they meet again years later they fall briefly - and disastrously - in love.
Half a lifetime passes before Humphrey and Ailsa's paths finally re-cross. What will each make of their past? And of the future?
'The Sea Lady proves [Drabble] remains one of the most thought-provoking and intellectually challenging writers around' FT Magazine
'A pleasure to read . . . utterly engrossing' Guardian
'Drabble excels at describing the minute detail of human behaviour . . . The Sea Lady is a potent tribute to lost dreams and harsh realities' Independent
Margaret Drabble was born in 1939 in Sheffield, Yorkshire, the daughter of barrister and novelist John F. Drabble, and sister of novelist A.S. Byatt. She is the author of eighteen novels and eight works of non-fiction, including biographies of Arnold Bennett and Angus Wilson. Her many novels include The Radiant Way (1987), A Natural Curiosity (1989), The Gates of Ivory (1991), The Peppered Moth (2000), The Seven Sisters (2002) and The Red Queen (2004) all of which are published by Penguin. In 1980, Margaret Drabble was made a CBE and in 2008 she was made DBE. She is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd, and lives in London and Somerset.
A pleasure to read . . . utterly engrossing
—— GuardianDrabble excels at describing the minute detail of human behaviour…The Sea Lady is a potent tribute to lost dreams and harsh realities.
—— The IndependentAn intelligent, full-bodied, big-hearted book
—— Daily MailOne of the two unquestionable classics of the first order that [Conrad] added to the English novel
—— F.R. LeavisTo convey an adequate idea of a book of such various merits as that which the author of Typee and Omoo has here placed before the reading public, is impossible in the scope of a review. High philosophy, liberal feeling, abstruse metaphysics popularly phrased, soaring speculation, a style as many-coloured as the theme, yet always good, and often admirable; fertile fancy, ingenious construction, playful learning, and an unusual power of enchaining the interest, and rising to the verge of the sublime, without overpassing that narrow boundary which plunges the ambitious penman into the ridiculous; all these are possessed by Herman Melville, and exemplified in these volumes
—— London Morning Advertiser, October 24 1851What a book [Moby-Dick] Melville has written! It gives me an idea of much greater power than his preceding ones. It hardly seemed to me that the review of it, in the Literary World, did justice to its best points
—— Nathaniel HawthorneOsama bin Laden's name and face have become so numbingly familiar to Americans as in effect to obliterate any history he and his shadowy followers might have had before they became stock symbols of everything loathsome and hateful to the collective imagination. Inevitably, then, collective passions are being funnelled into a drive for war that uncannily resembles Captain Ahab in pursuit of Moby Dick
—— Edward SaidThat young lady has a talent for describing the involvements of feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with
—— Sir Walter ScottI'd like to write a play as perfect as Emma
—— Simon GrayA literary phenomenon on the grandest scale – a work of genius
—— Isabel QuiglySublime and sweet melancholy suffuses the story. Beautiful
—— Tim Waterstone , The WeekA delicate meditation on mortality, decay and the fading of beauty
—— Martin Sixsmith , The WeekHistorical fiction at its best
—— Orlando Figes , The WeekNo novel is perfect, but this small, wonderfully atmospheric and immensely poignant story...comes very close
—— Sunday Times, *Summer Reads of 2021*
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