Realms of Gold, The [Mass Market Paperback]

Margaret Drabble (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1977

Realms of Gold, The by Drabble, Margaret

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Popular Library; 4th THUS edition (1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140043608
• ISBN-13: 978-0140043600
• ASIN: B001KTIEHQ
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A novel of travels and returns rewards intellect, emotion., December 15, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Realms of Gold (Hardcover)

This novel begins slowly, with a woman scholar in a foreign city, due to give a lecture, suffering a toothache. The pace accelerates as she returns to England, travels to a conference in Africa, then returns abruptly for a totally unpredictable family crisis. Competent, confident she settles all that can be settled, faces what cannot, and finds personal restoration in lasting love. A historian, an archeologist, and a geologist settle into their own visions of time, as the most suitable ending evolves itself. A stimulating reflection, a wonderful story, a great work of narrative control, by far my favorite Drabble of all.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Much better than expected, September 22, 2005

By 

R. Silverman (Dunham, Quebec) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Realms of Gold (Mass Market Paperback)

I was a bit hesitant to get into this novel -- must be my problem -- due to its being published in the late '70's, but a novel very much in the present. Sorry, but the '70's as "the present" didn't seem that charming.

But I stuck with it. First of all, Margaret Drabble's command of the English language is quite impressive. Her passion for her characters is undeniable and their passions begin to rub off on you.

I won't get into the plot -- I hate reading plots before I start a book, but I suggest you try this novel. It shows the mindset of the English as they entered the last quarter of the 20th century, and you see that the petty concerns and worries are not that much different from today. If there is a complaint, it would be that there lacks a certain immediacy in the writing; both writer and reader end up being quite a distance from the action, but the passion of the writer pulls you through in the end.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life's rich tapestry, March 19, 2011

By 

Vital Spark (Or, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Realms of Gold (Mass Market Paperback)

Another fine Margaret Drabble novel, though definitely not my favorite.

The first third is taken up with the anger, regret, and sadness of the main character, Frances, who is kicking herself for breaking up with Karel, the man she loves.

The middle part concerns the boredom, fear and despair of a young woman, the mother of a difficult, unhappy, teething baby, married to a nasty, narrow-minded bully of a verbally abusive husband.

The last third mainly concerns the trials and tribulations of Karel, married to a crazy woman, still desperately in love with Frances ,deeply depressed because she broke up with him, not knowing that she has sent him a postcard ,re-affirming her love,the postcard delayed because of a nine-month postal strike.(They do get back together, but not until page 344.)

Just when things seem to be looking up, one of the most sympathetic characters, takes himself into the woods with a fatal dose of sleeping pills for himself and his little baby, and commits suicide. Their bodies are discovered ten days later.

Joyce Carol Oates says The Realms of Gold is Margaret Drabble's "richest, most rewarding novel", and I believe that Margaret Drabble is incapable of writing a bad novel; however, she herself says that reading about depression is depressing,which, I'm afraid, sums up my feelings about Realms of Gold.