The Sea Lady (Paperback)

~ (Author) "The winning book was about fish, and to present it, she appeared to have dressed herself as a mermaid, in silver sequinned scales..." (more)
Key Phrases: pink folder, dinner after the show, programme seller, Ailsa Kelman, Humphrey Clark, Dame Mary (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Margaret Drabble has brought all her many gifts to bear in this excellent novel, The Sea Lady. It is scientific, sociological, romantic, psychological, ironic, satiric, poignant, downright funny, and even rather mysterious in some parts.

It is the story of Humphrey Clark and Ailsa Kelman, now in their sixties and traveling--separately--to receive honorary degrees from a university in Ornemouth, a town on the North Sea. They met in Ornemouth when they were children, spent one summer together along with a local boy, Sandy Clegg, and Ailsa's brother, Tommy. It was that kind of summer which, however brief, has a bearing on the rest of one's life. Humphrey Clark's introduction to the sea sets him on his career path. Newly minted personalities were coming into being, the cruelty of children was all around, every moment was writ large in the minds of all of them, especially Humphrey.

Now, more than 50 years have passed and both Ailsa and Humphrey are reminiscing--Ailsa, typically, on an airplane, and Humphrey, just as typically, on a train. Their accounts of the last 50-plus years are unsparing, recounting their successes and failures, the places where their lives intersected and the results of those meetings, their professional and personal lives--all that has brought them to this day. Their memories are attenuated through the prism of their individual differences of temperament and interests. Humphrey is an innocent and a bit of a plodder, having made his name as a marine biologist, while Ailsa, the feminist, is a wild card: "Ailsa Kelman lacks method, but what she lacks in method she makes up for in energy and originality and output and panache." They could not be more different, but when did that ever stand in the way of connection? They have been brought to this ceremony by Sandy Clegg, now Alistair Macfarlane, whose own story is worth knowing.

The sea and its creatures are the metaphors that inform the story and at the end, we see that this meeting between Ailsa and Humphrey is "a journey of purification." This is Drabble at her very best. --Valerie Ryan --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

The bold latest from by the ever-inventive Drabble (The Red Queen, etc.) tells the tale of two aging academics—Ailsa Kelman, flamboyant feminist activist and TV talking head, and marine biologist Humphrey Clark—who are traveling separately to the North Sea coastal town of Ornemouth: she's presenting a book award that he, unknowingly, will receive. The two met at Ornemouth as children one summer toward the end of WWII; they lost track of one another and haven't seen each other since their brief, disastrous marriage in 1960s London. A cocky narrator reveals the charged memories, of childhood and beyond, that the trip triggers for both—and occasionally breaks free to fill in narrative gaps and pose destiny-altering scenarios. Neither is content: Humphrey is lonely and dissatisfied by his scholarship's mere competence; Ailsa, twice divorced, is uncertain if she's a success or a caricature of success (her cervix has been on TV). Secondaries include red-headed local boy Sandy Clegg, and Ailsa's rich, unscrupulous brother Tommy, in thick with the royals. Nothing as simple as a love story, this prismatic novel shines as a faceted portrait of England's changing mores, as an ode on childhood's joys and injustices, and a primer for marine biology, complete with hermaphrodite crayfish and fossils of sea lilies. Seductive as the tides, it pulls the reader in. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; Reprint edition (May 12, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156034263
• ISBN-13: 978-0156034265
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #53,491 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 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?

23 of 23 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.)

16 of 16 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!