The Pure Gold Baby - Hardcover

Drabble, Margaret

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0544158903 ISBN 13: 9780544158900

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013

Synopsis

Jessica Speight, a young anthropology student in 1960s London, is at the beginning of a promising academic career when an affair with her married professor turns her into a single mother. Anna is a pure gold baby with a delightful sunny nature. But as it becomes clear that Anna will not be a normal child, the book circles questions of responsibility, potential, even age, with Margaret Drabble’s characteristic intelligence, sympathy, and wit.

Drabble once wrote, “Family life itself, that safest, most traditional, most approved of female choices, is not a sanctuary; it is, perpetually, a dangerous place.” Told from the point of view of the group of mothers who surround Jess, The Pure Gold Baby is a brilliant, prismatic novel that takes us into that place with satiric verve, trenchant commentary, and a movingly intimate story of the unexpected transformations at the heart of motherhood.

About this title

Book Description

HMH hardcover, 2013, previous ISBN 978-0-544-15890-0

From the Back Cover

Praise for Margaret Drabble

“Reading a Margaret Drabble novel has always been like cozying up with a cup of hot tea by a gas fire with a dull English winter rain misting the window, and contemplating the story of one’s own life.” — New York Times

“As meticulous as Jane Austen, and as deadly as Evelyn Waugh.” — Los Angeles Times

“The deft commingling of the sentimental and the matter-of-fact is characteristic of writer Margaret Drabble . . . Drabble is one of the most versatile and accomplished writers of her generation.” — Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker

“Reading Margaret Drabble’s novels has become something of a rite of passage . . . Sharply observed, exquisitely companionable tales of women of a certain age and class, educated, egocentric, strong, unlucky in love.” — Washington Post

“Drabble’s fiction has achieved a panoramic vision of contemporary life.” — Chicago Tribune

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0544158903
• ISBN 13: 9780544158900
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304