"These signs of age, the aging process, she greeted and greets with curiosity, with a resolute welcome. One might as well welcome them, after all: there is not much point in rejecting them. It is all intended, it is all part of the plan. There is a goal to this journey, there will be an arrival, Liz Headland believes."

This book is similar to The Line of Beauty in that it is a novel about life in London during the Thatcher years. It opens on New Year's eve 1979 at a large party at which dozens of characters are introduced, but ultimately the focus is on three friends, former Cambridge classmates who are now in their 40's. Liz is the hostess of the party, and she is a successful psychiatrist married to media mogul Charles (who advises Liz at the New Year's party that he is divorcing her). Alix is married to Brian, and both of them have retained their social consciences. They continue to live in genteel poverty. Alix works at various "gigs," including teaching English literature at a woman's prison. The third friend, Esther, is an art historian, dilettante, and she has never married, though she has a serious lover. Sometimes popping in and out of the story is Shirley, Liz's sister who never went to university, married young, and who remains in the northern manufacturing town where she and Liz grew up.

Like The Line of Beauty, the book is a treasure of political and social commentary about the times, while also being a compelling study of the friendship and the lives and loves of these interesting women. It also paints a pretty grim picture of the havoc wreaked by Thatcher's policies over the 1980's on working class and struggling people.

I really loved this book as well, and over the past few years I have been "rediscovering" Margaret Drabble as an excellent and favorite author. I read many of her earlier books when I was in my 20's, then somehow lost track of her. I learned that this is the first of a series involving the lives of Liz, Alix and Esther, and I will be seeking the others to read in the future.

4 stars ( )

A story set in the early 80s about 3 women, with college, career, family. It is a story of the 80s culture with social commentary. I enjoyed that the women were middle aged, they were all doing reasonably well in their careers; one married, one divorced (just), one never married. It also covers the aspects of right and left politics, miners strike, and serial killer. A lot happens but the emotional components don't really seem to match up so in that regard it doesn't feel quite realistic. ( )

I finished the book a bit confused as to how I felt about it. I wondered how someone who had not lived through the time and place would engage with the narrative - so full of details which resonate with me as I was in London at that time. I loved the dense writing and engaged with the people so perhaps there is no need to speculate on how well the book will translate in time and place, ( )

To paraphrase Samuel Johnson worth reading perhaps but not going to read. Austenesque as it follows the story lines of three women who lives intersect at College and their lives afterward, not a lot of overall plot, left me tired midway through. ( )

Three women, who met as they began school at Cambridge, are now approaching their 50th birthdays. It is 1979 in London. And over the next 5 years their lives will be affected by the illnesses and deaths of partners and parents, by divorce and dating, by worry over their children as they begin their own lives, by the cuts of Thatcher's regime. And though they have wended their ways in and out of each others' lives over the past 30 years and will continue to do so, they are always there for each other.

I had never heard of this book when it came up as one of "randomized reads" for a 1001 book list group. I was not sure it sounded any good. And maybe this is the female equivalent of the "grumpy old man reflects" book (Sense of and Ending; Gilead), but I loved this. Maybe because I am the same age as these women, and though my kids are on the young age of theirs (similar to Sam and Celia), I get their worries of parents' health, kids' futures, jobs, redundancy, legacy, and loss of worth. Of home, cats, and even plants. Of steep government cuts and privatized prisons. This book feels completely relevant in the US today, 30 years after it was written and published in England. ( )