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The Needle's Eye

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This is an excellent book. It may be that it's genesis was a formula: a bright man from a deprived background fulfills his mother's ambitions by going to Oxford and having a legal career, and seeks to escape the pressure of his background by marrying someone who symbolizes freedom from social and financial anxiety; he meets a woman not particularly bright, from a wealthy background whose parents had no interest in her, who suffers from having been subject to embittered and puritanical servants, who gives away her money, marries someone who symbolizes social stigma, in search of values independent of financial and social ones. He sticks to his unhappy marriage, is free of anxiety, but seems to have virtually no pleasure in other people including his children. She divorces her husband and lives in squalor, but loves her children and finds great pleasure in her lower class friends and neighbours.

The reason this formulaic starting point works out so well is two-fold. First, the author sets these people into real places and times, which are vividly recognizable, an incredibly richly described, closely observed world. Second, the events that unfold are anything but formulaic, rather they are allowed to follow their own logic, as the author's imagination dictates. There is a considerable if restrained reporting of the inner lives of the two main characters, and that is probably hard going for some readers, but as things progress, the characters deepen, becoming more vivid, convincing and charming. The contrast between what the reader knows of the characters' thoughts and what they surmise about each others inner lives is particularly interesting.

With views in passing of numerous eccentric and sharply observed secondary characters, and extraordinary evocations of Southern English occasions and locations, this is a brilliant expression of the human condition - at least as it was in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century. It is also leavened with a number of scenes that made me laugh out loud, waking my wife in bed

beside me.

The title of this novel is taken from a saying of Jesus recorded in the New Testament: - "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God". These words were spoken to a wealthy young man who had demurred at the suggestion that he should sell all his possessions and give the proceeds to the poor in order to inherit eternal life. Margaret Drabble's novel, however, is about a woman who has done precisely what that young man was unwilling to do.

Rose Bryanston is an heiress who, on attaining her majority at the age of 21, takes two steps which alienate her from her wealthy parents. Firstly, she marries her Greek-Cypriot boyfriend Christopher Vassiliou, of whom her parents strongly disapprove. Secondly, she disposes of her inherited fortune of £20,000, giving it to build a school in a small African country. (We learn that Rose was born in 1937, so these events would have taken place in 1958, when £20,000 would be worth a great deal more than it would today).

The main part of the story takes place in 1968-69. (Although the novel was written in 1972, the date can be ascertained from references to the pre-decimal currency abolished in 1971 and veiled references to the My Lai massacre and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia). Rose is now divorced from Christopher who proved to be a violent, abusive husband, and is living in relative poverty with her three children in the Hornsey-Muswell Hill area. (In the sixties this was an impoverished, run-down part of North London, although today it is considerably more affluent than it was then). The main policy developments all arise from Christopher's attempts to challenge Rose for custody of the children.

Apart from Rose herself, the most important character is not Christopher, but Simon Camish, a barrister who befriends Rose and advises her on her case, even though he is not a specialist in family law. Simon's speciality is trade union and industrial relations law, something highly topical at the time Drabble was writing, as Ted Heath's Conservative government had just passed a controversial Industrial Relations Act. Simon's own marriage is an unhappy one, and although Rose is not physically attractive he finds himself drawn to her gentle idealism, which contrasts sharply with his wife Julie's social-climbing snobbery. Their friendship, however, never develops into a sexual relationship; this is not (thank God) just another "adultery-in-Hampstead" type romance.

One of Drabble's preoccupations in this book is the way in which people's circumstances are condition by their social background. Simon and Rose have, in a way, moved in opposite directions. He was born into genteel poverty in Newcastle, but has achieved success in his profession and comparative affluence, despite which he still clings to his working-class roots and his left-wing idealism. (Out of deference to his background, he always acts for the unions, even when he thinks that they are in the wrong). This is one of the major differences between him and Julie, who is from a more middle-class background and lacks a social conscience. (Her father, like Rose's, was a successful businessman, although merely well-to-do as opposed to spectacularly wealthy).

Rose was born into wealth but has voluntarily chosen to live in poverty. Yet though she may seem to Simon like the St Francis of Muswell Hill, her apparently selfless act has led not so much to the Kingdom of God as to the impoverishment of her children as well as of herself, to the breakdown of her marriage and to her alienation from her parents. Even in Africa she has achieved little; the school was burnt down in civil disturbances shortly after it was built and much of the money was siphoned off into the pockets of local politicians. This raises the question of whether one can live by Christian idealism alone, and whether Rose's apparent selflessness might just be another form of selfishness, the indulging of her own ideals above the needs of her family.

"The Needle's Eye" will not appeal to those who expect their fiction to be packed with action or dramatic incident, but its author displays a great talent for psychological analysis comparable to that of her older contemporary Iris Murdoch and for creating believable, well-rounded characters. This was the third book by Margaret Drabble which I have read. The others, "A Summer Bird Cage" and "The Millstone", were both youthful works, written while the author was in her mid-twenties, and I found both rather slight, lightweight works. This one, by contrast, although Drabble was only slightly older (33) when she wrote it, is a novel of much greater depth.

First of all this is my second Drabble book. I read "The Seven Sisters" and was delighted. Drabble has the bitter tone down cold. Simply put, I like how she captures the emotion of "heartlessness." But in "The needles eye" i've been having a hard time not getting distracted. It's not as followable. It reads like an old novel, like something people might have liked to read one hundred years ago. I keep forgetting who is the central character- rose or simon- and what's going on- and why I care about the Rose's legal problems. And why does Simon seem to be enamored of rose, and is there going to be an illicit sex scene here or not? And if Simon is just realizing that Rose and her ex-husband are meant for one another, what is the point? Who is Emily? I'm disappointed that it's not compelling enough. I want more exploration of Simon.... He is too invisible and yet he is the only thing that holds my interest .