Brought up in a suffocating, emotionless home in the north of England, Clara finds freedom when she wins a scholarship and moves to London. There, she meets Clelia and the rest of the brilliant and charming Denham family; they dazzle Clara with their gift for life, and Clara longs to be part of their bohemian world. But while she will do anything to join their circle, she gives no thought to the chaos that she may cause . . .

'Drabble presents characters who are not passively witnessing their lives (and ours); she is not a writer who reflects the helplessness of the stereotyped "sick society", but one who has taken upon herself the task, largely ignored today, of attempting the active, vital, energetic, mysterious re-creation of a set of values by which human beings can live' - Joyce Carol Oates

Prizes

Winner of The James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

I have learned so much from Margaret Drabble's work. Her prose is very beautiful, very funny, and at the same time very serious. Novels like The Millstone and Jerusalem the Golden have helped me to understand what great writing can be -- SALLY ROONEY
Deserves to be . . . widely read . . . The traditional narrative mechanics of fate and free will, character and chance, are the driving forces of Drabble's fiction * * Guardian * *
An unapologetically frank novel about the female experience * * Guardian * *
Praise for Margaret Drabble: Margaret Drabble's early novels were intimate and sprightly chronicles of the small dissatisfactions and small triumphs of young women like herself -- HILARY MANTEL * * New York Review of Books * *
One of the most versatile and accomplished authors of her generation * * New Yorker * *
One of our foremost women writers * * Guardian * *
Drabble presents characters who are not passively witnessing their lives (and ours); she is not a writer who reflects the helplessness of the stereotyped "sick society," but one who has taken upon herself the task, largely ignored today, of attempting the active, vital, energetic, mysterious re- creation of a set of values by which human beings can live. -- Joyce Carol Oates * * New York Times * *

Dame Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield in 1939 and was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. She is the author of twenty highly acclaimed novels. She has also written biographies, screenplays and was the editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature. She was appointed CBE in 1980, and made DBE in the 2008 Honours list. She was also awarded the 2011 Golden PEN Award for a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature. She is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd.