The Gates of Ivory [Hardcover]

Margaret Drabble (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2, 1991

The Gates of Ivory is a vibrant, mesmerizing novel that juxtaposes the cynical, sophisticated realm of London against the dreaded world of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot’s Cambodia. In London, psychiatrist Liz Headleand receives an unexpected package, containing, among other things, a laundry bill from a hotel in Bangkok, old newspaper clippings, and two human finger bones. She recognizes the handwriting as that of Stephen Cox, who has been travelling in the Far East. With the help of her friends, Liz goes in search of the man who might once have been her lover, and gradually we learn of Stephen’s difficult pilgrimage, from Thailand to Vietnam and, finally, Cambodia. Disturbing, wryly humorous, and deeply affecting, The Gates of Ivory brings two very different worlds into uneasy proximity, and the result is potent.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Why impose the story line of individual fate upon a story which is at least in part to do with numbers?" asks Drabble in the middle of her follow-up to The Radiant Way and A Natural Curiosity. Instead of developing a conventional plot, the author casts a tone of irony (as sympathetic as it is subtle) over the daily affairs of Liz Headleand, Alix Bowen and Esther Breuer, the heroines of the previous novels, and synchronizes these with the efforts of Liz's friend Stephen Cox to make art from the unfathomable political holocausts in Cambodia--and with Liz's attempt to locate a vanished Stephen. As if underscoring her development of a form that "offers not a grain of comfort or repose" even as it engrosses the reader, Drabble reintroduces characters from The Needle's Eye only to declare that "they have wandered into this story from the old-fashioned, Freudian, psychological novel, and they cannot mix and mingle." What seem mutually exclusive goals are realized: the characters are clear and compelling, objects of particular scrutiny; and the horrors of history are not trivialized by transposition to a tidily wrapped narrative. Drabble's achievement commands awe even as her subject matter rouses immeasurable stores of pity and terror.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This is the end of a trilogy, begun by The Radiant Way ( LJ 10/15/87) and A Natural Curiosity ( LJ 7/89), that examines life through the eyes of Liz, Esther, and Alix, three friends who met at Cambridge in the 1950s. In this final novel, Liz appears as a counterpoint to Stephen Cox. Influenced by Conrad and his own work as a novelist, Stephen succumbs to an overwhelming desire to observe first-hand the antithetical world of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. His friends are skeptical, but no one becomes morbidly concerned until the relics of his journey arrive in a package for Liz. A fascinating mystery ensues, one that's sturdy enough to carry the full weight of sobering social commentary and political reportage along with it. Drabble structures the novel around divided narratives, rather than straight chronology, reasserting in the process her abiding interest in the complexities of human experience. A bibliography is included. Highly recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/92.
- Janet W. Reit, Univ. of Vermont Lib., Burlington
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 463 pages
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart; First Edition. first Canadian edition (November 2, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0771028628
• ISBN-13: 978-0771028625
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,975,745 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Margaret Drabble is the author of The Sea Lady, The Seven Sisters, The Peppered Moth, and The Needle's Eye, among other novels. She has written biographies of Arnold Bennett and Angus Wilson, and she is the editor of the fifth and sixth editions of The Oxford Companion to English Literature. For her contributions to contemporary English literature, she was made a Dame of the British Empire in 2008.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Genius, Overlooked, August 1, 2001

By 

David Kleist - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Gates of Ivory (Mass Market Paperback)

Margaret Drabble is a literary genius. Her Headeland Trilogy, of which THE GATES OF IVORY is the concluding volume, is one of the great literary accomplishments of the late twentieth century. In it, an entire world--the global village itself--is analyzed, along with its problems, through the eyes and stories of a myriad of engaging, three-dimensional characters.

Because her stories have a substantially feminine focus; because Drabble's prose and work as a whole requires sustained attention to detail in order to perceive the interconnections and ramifications; because her styles of writing aren't as flashy as those of Rushdie (et al.); because she isn't intellectually fashionable (lord knows why); because she's a Brit and not an American; because her sister's less enduring but more popular/academic work sometimes overshadows her own; because she's relentlessly normal as opposed to brash, odd, or glitzy: all these possibilities still do not excuse the reading public as a whole from their general lack of attention to Drabble's stunning accomplishments as a novelist.

Read THE RADIANT WAY, A NATURAL CURIOSITY, and THE GATES OF IVORY and be the first on your block to recognize Drabble as Nobel-prize material!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a wonderfully complex novel, January 22, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Gates of Ivory (Mass Market Paperback)

Gates of Ivory is perhaps Margaret Drabble's most difficult novel because it weaves back and forth between London and Cambodia, between "Good Time" and "Bad Time." However, amidst social commentary, Drabble's humor comes through, and the ending is reminiscent of the ending of Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway." I cannot do this novel justice in a short, quickly-written review. I can only strongly recommend that you read it.