Margaret Drabble's Writing Emerged from The
argaret Drabble’s writing emerged right after the Nobel Winner’s death, in 2013, is of extraordi- from the turbulences of the second nary emotional power and political wisdom while seeming a wave feminist movement and the rad- simple recollection of Lessing as a visitor and as a host. ical demands and changes it brought I spoke with Margaret Drabble in Toronto, during her to contemporary fiction. She married brief stay at a writers’ festival, where she came to talk about Myoung, had children, and started work on what would become her most recent novel, The Pure Gold Baby. She is a gener- her first published novel at the age of twenty-one, soon after ous interlocutor, and after the first quarter-hour it felt like a graduating from the University of Cambridge, in 1960. In a basic understanding was tacitly established, many of the for- BBC documentary about the young Drabble, recorded around malities left aside. —Lydia Perović the time of her first literary successes—mid-to-late sixties, the time of her award-winning novels The Millstone and Jeru- I. THE PRESSURE salem the Golden—she appears the embodiment of cool: the FOR THINGS TO BE SAID young Glenda Jackson style, the mini-skirt, the knee-high boots, the effortless, understated 1960s glamour. THE BELIEVER: The big Feminist Fiction wave that you Her first novel,A Summer Bird-Cage, is a joyful bundle were part of, together with Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, of contradictions, in which the chatty musings about clothes, Angela Carter, Toni Morrison, A.S. Byatt, Octavia Butler— popularity, and men do not distract from the historical ques- how did it take shape? That kind of critical mass of fiction tion at hand: what can a young woman do with her life in the and criticism that focused on gender philosophy and poli- latter half of the twentieth century? All her young novels have tics can’t be matched with anything happening today.
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