Description

‘There aren’t many chroniclers of our older years who do it so well, with such wit and realism and intelligence’ TESSA HADLEY
‘I have learned so much from Margaret Drabble’s work’ SALLY ROONEY
‘One of Britain’s most dazzling writers’ New York Times
‘Generous, perceptive and good-humoured’ JOAN BAKEWELL
‘One of the most thought-provoking and intellectually challenging writers around’ Financial Times

We all age differently, some stoically, some angrily, some calmly, some with an unfailing spirit of adventure and an undimmed curiosity

From one of our finest literary voices, The Great Good Places is a luminous collection of essays, stories and memoir that traverses the experience of growing older and looking back on a life deeply lived.

Drawing on decades of reading, writing and observation, Margaret Drabble reflects on the complex business of ageing, the strange workings of memory – its wonders and its fragility – and on the ‘great good places’, the childhood homes, coastal sanctuaries and cherished libraries that shape who we are.

Rich with a lifetime’s worth of insight and wisdom and peppered with Drabble’s trademark lucidity and wit, The Great Good Places is an elegantly layered and profoundly moving meditation on time, place and the enduring power of recollection.

Publisher Review

Wonderful . . . There aren’t many chroniclers of our older years who do it so well, with such wit and realism and intelligence — TESSA HADLEY ‘Generous, perceptive, good-humoured, Margaret Drabble is always a delight to read — JOAN BAKEWELL Praise for Margaret Drabble: I have learned so much from Margaret Drabble’s work. Her prose is very beautiful, very funny, and at the same time very serious — SALLY ROONEY 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 Britain’s most dazzling writers * * New York Times * * [Her] novels brim with sharply observed life and the author’s seemingly infinite sympathy for “ordinary women” — JOYCE CAROL OATES One of the most versatile and accomplished authors of her generation * * New Yorker * * One of the most thought-provoking and intellectually challenging writers around * * Financial Times * * One of our foremost women writers * * Guardian * * The novelist who will have done for late twentieth-century London what Dickens did for Victorian London * * New York Times * *