First published in 1963, this is a short, first novel about a girl coming home to attend her older sister’s wedding. I reread this lots when I was a teenager, identifying with Sarah in the shadow of an older sister and enjoying the glamorous descriptions of London. I loved the easy style in which the novel was written and eavesdropping on all the characters’ conversations. I knew I too wanted to learn Italian, visit Rome and have a friend like Simone. I loved the quote from Webster too: Tis like a summer birdcage in a garden: the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds that are within despair and are in a consumption for fear they shall never get out.
And so, as it happens, I went on to study Webster, visit Rome and learn some Italian. And tried not to end up like Stella, Louise’s friend, who married Bill, ‘the physics man’, and lived in Streatham.
I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed Margaret Drabble’s early novels and how they must have subconsciously influenced me over the years.
Perhaps that is also why I like short novels. And rereading them.
Saturday, 6 March 2010
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