The Sea Lady (Charnwood Large Print) [Import] [Hardcover]

Margaret Drabble (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Ulverscroft Large Print Books Ltd; Large Print Ed edition (May 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1846177294
• ISBN-13: 978-1846177293
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 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

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absorbing and Entertaining, May 5, 2007

By 

Lauren Hahn (Mundelein, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Sea Lady (Hardcover)

If you fell in love with Drabble's novels while reading her early material from the 1970's, then you might not be as enthusiastic about this work. It's an uneven novel, but contains some of the loveliest evocations of childhood I think I've ever read. The novel is also, in part, a love letter to English coastal regions. Also I found the main characters, Ailsa and Humphrey, delightful. If you like witty dialogue and surprising plot twists, you'll love this. And quite honestly, I have no idea what the other earlier reviewer is talking about with "anti-Americanism." Is he/she writing about a completely different book?

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Amazing Novel!, May 16, 2007

By 

April Wilson (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Sea Lady (Hardcover)

I wish I could find a more imaginative way to endorse this delightfully inventive novel.

Initially, I was impatient with the slow pace of the second chapter, and I also found the Public Orator to be intrusive and unnecessary. I wanted

Humphrey and Ailsa to get together more quickly than they did. However, once I trusted the author, and was

able to read the novel on its own terms, I began to like it better and better. I realized the value of the Public Orator only at the end of the novel when I knew more about him.

Although I am not especially interested in fish, the descriptions

of them also grew on me. I liked

the sea squirts who were born with

spines, and then lost them over time.

I liked the spiffy fish who apparently committed suicide,

rather than remaining confined in a tank.

I liked the depictions of childhood,

and of approaching old age, and the

theme of how to come to terms with

one's life after most of it is over.

I found The Sea Lady to be surprisingly reassuring.

(Sorry about the wretchedly irregular

lines. This is the best my computer

could do -- and I tried.)

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Aging, Longing, and Loving in Upper-Middle Class Britain, October 17, 2007

By 

Stephen Schwartz (Ithaca, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Sea Lady (Hardcover)

For some reason I seem lately to have been reading several novels about aging, depressed, and lonely academics or members of the media or arts community--E.g. Shroud, by Banville; Amsterdam by McEwan, and A Foreign Affair by Lurie, among others. The Sea Lady is another and one of the best of this flourishing genre. As in The Sea Lady the protagonists seem always to be highly successful (unlike most of us real aging academics reading or writing amazon reviews), very depressed about their miserable lives (but it's not always clear why and sometimes seems self-indulgent), are divorced or in any case alone and lonely (but many of us real retired academics are still married, with squabbles of grand children), and are almost obsessively self-involved (aren't we all?--or perhaps I should only speak for myself here).

The Sea Lady is the compressed life story of several children who meet one or two summers shortly after World War II vacationing on the seashore of England near the border with Scotland on the North Sea. Two, Ailsa and Humphrey, meet again later in life, fall in love and marry, divorce, etc. Then meet yet again in their sixties, etc., etc. All the children turn out to be famous or wealthy as adults; all are successful, miserable, lonely, aging or aged now in 2006 (the story is told seamlessly with flashbacks).

Drabble is a fine writer with a sensitive simple style that is very similar to Ian McEwan's but without the twisted, dark tones of McEwan. Although nothing happens in the novel, there is no violence, little lurid sex, or anything else of moment, I found it gripping and enjoyable. This is life, a mirror for us aging academics. Even if we're not successful or miserable and lonely there is much in this novel that illuminates and perhaps quiets our own demons.

Some of the things I very much liked about The Sea Lady: Drabble manages to weave a lot of trivia about life in England since WW II into her narrative. This novel evoked England for me better than many others that I've read lately (I'm a confirmed anglophile). Also Drabble uses quotes and snippets from Shakespeare in a creative and charming way that enhances the story. (I'm also a life-long Shakespeare fan.)

I must say that I am amazed by Drabble's talent. I wonder how she can breathe such life, such intensity into her story and characters. I admire and wonder at this talent, this genius. As with other fine writers, I wonder how they can know so much, sense so many things and get them on the page and make them live off the page. This is the first of Drabble's novels that I have read and I came upon it by accident, but I plan to read more of her works. Congratulations!