The Sea Lady

by Margaret Drabble (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2006

  $3.25

  Two distinguished guests are travelling separately towards a ceremony where they will meet for the first time for three decades. Both are apprehensive, as they review the successes and failures of their public life, and their secret history. Humphrey and Ailsa met as children, by the grey Northern sea to which they are returning. Humphrey was already a serious child, drawn towards the underwater world of marine biology, but there were as yet few signs of Ailsa's dazzling transformation into a flamboyant feminist celebrity. The novel traces the evolution of their careers and their passionately entangled relationship, and brings them together again to see what they will make of their past, and in what spirit they will be able to face the future. In this taut and elegiac novel, Margaret Drabble examines the ways in which place, chance and time merge to make us what we are.

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $3.25

  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.

• New

  Paperback
  2008

  $21.85