The Waterfall [Paperback]

Margaret Drabble (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Penguin Books (1981)
• ASIN: B000UIFX7W
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,743,631 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

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Passive Experience, November 10, 2001

By 

Duane Simolke "author, The Acorn Stories, Deg... (Lubbock, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Waterfall (Mass Market Paperback)

In Margaret Drabbles novel The Waterfall we meet Jane Gray, a woman whose suffering and blessings stem not from action, but from inaction. She prefers boredom over activity, chance over effort, and whatever happens to her over whatever she can make happen. She only falls in love by chance, a corrupt love she never tries to avoid.

Since Jane will not reach for it, love must find her. It watches and waits for her to recover from the birth of her second child. Jane, who drifted into marriage then drove her husband away with her passive disinterest, manages to (unintentionally) attract another man, with whom she falls in love. Their love develops not from a courtship, but from his childlike desire to lie in her warm bed, and from her passive inability to refuse him.

Jane takes us on a journey through her passive experience to an existential awakening. Though it would seem that a character like the one I describe here would prove intolerable, the talented Margaret Drabble makes us want to take the journey with Jane, and makes us want to see Jane finally discarding her passivity.

I consider The Waterfall Drabbles finest novel, and hope that more readers will discover it.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bring it back into print!, November 23, 1999

By 

frumiousb "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Waterfall (Plume) (Mass Market Paperback)

I am disappointed to see that this book is out of print, as I can think of several other people who would appreciate it.

The Waterall is a beautiful little love story, set in the aftermath of the birth. Drabble has written a novel about doomed lovers and doppleganger cousins. These sound like the most standard of tropes, but they are handled here with freshness and grace. The book resists the temptation to wrap up neatly and reminds us that the non-conclusions of the real world can be just as satisfying as a more literary ending.

I did not admire this as much as I did Jerusalem the Golden, which is one of my favorite books. The Waterfall lacks the scope and reach of some of her other (more famous) works. People who have not read Drabble before may want to begin with either Jerusalem or The Ice Age. Still, there are also much worse places to begin. I found the Waterfall both affecting and well crafted and would give it a high recommendation.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book ever?, November 1, 2001

By 

Katarina Wesslén-Lindahl (Stockholm, Sweden) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Waterfall (Plume) (Mass Market Paperback)

I am Swedish and I just read this book. I borrowed it from my local library in my own language, printed in 1988. I lived with Jane for several days, not wanting the book to end. It is very difficult to express my view on the book, (maybe)it turned out to be all about myself. I just ordered a used copy from Amazon.com in English, I want to OWN this book. Read it!