[I confess all! I have been a Drabble…]

Scan page 9

I confess all! I have been a Drabble addict ever since, as an O' level student and "great-novelist-to-be, her image as the holder of the 'glittering prizes'-a starred first, three kids and a large house in Hampstead -hovered enticingly over my struggling efforts.

Well, the passage of time has cut my aspirations well down to size, but I still find an enduring fascination in the enchanted world of everyday trendy folk in NW6 that Ms Drabble so skillfully creates, or re-creates, in her novels.

At first glance her clutch of characters in The Middle Ground, a liberated' woman journalist, an earnest social worker, a womanising medical researcher and a writer who fashionably lost an arm in Eritrea would seem to be as fatuous a bunch of poseurs as ever infested the columns of the Guardian.

Mastery

And yet ... and yet... Ms Drabble's erudition and mastery of the novelist's craft draw the reader into the haphazard but interlinking world, where strikes and insurrections are counterposed with alleged infidelities and children falling off skateboards.

I do not think it is an idle comparison to rank Margaret Drabble alongside Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell as being amongst the most acute observers of the ironies and absurdities of contemporary social pretensions.

It is easy to feel anger at Drabble's heroine, Kate, as she complains that her eighty-quid boots are uncomfortable, and spends as much on flowers in ten minutes as most of us earn in a week, but Drabble is aware of this herself, and as the backgrounds and contradictions of her characters unfold-well, to know all, is to forgive all'.

More than in her previous WENDY FRENCH reviews Margaret Drabble's latest novel The Middle Ground (Weidenfield and Nicolson)

novels Drabble acknowledges. the growing impact of the class struggle on the lives of people hitherto uninvolved.

Kate's father, for example, a lifelong trade unionist, becomes embittered as a result of the (implied) sell-outs of the bureaucracy during the 1970s; and the Tory voting physiotherapist who nonetheless comes out on strike when instructed by her union.

Drabble fans will not need encouragement to obtain their regular fix' but I would advise those who regard her simply as just another trendy-smart woman novelist to appreciate her subtleties of observation, and look, not for ruthless analysis, but a masterpiece of the novelist's craft by a brilliant creative talent.

LIAISON

COMMITTEE DISCUSSION BULLETIN No. 2 TILC Declaration Price 40p plus 15p p&p from WSL, BM Box 5277, London WCIV 6XX

Scan page 10

WHDUSTRIAL NEWS Wednesday August

----- pull-quotes -----

Articles on Nicaragua, Parity Commission, and