The Seven Sisters

by Margaret Drabble

Candida Wilton has been ignored by her husband and children for years, before being displaced by a younger woman. Moving to London, alone, divorced and without much money, it seems she will now enjoy a life only of small pleasures: trips to the gym, visits to her reading group. When she receives an unexpected windfall, Candida gathers together six travelling companions - women friends from childhood, from married life and after - and maps out a journey she has long dreamed of, around Tunis, Naples and Pompeii, where her grey city lifecan blossom into one of colour and adventure.

In The Seven Sisters, Margaret Drabble captures the wonder of second chances with dry wit, honesty and immaculate observation.

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, British Literature, Literature, Womens

322 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 5, 2002

About the author

Dame Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield in 1939 and was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. She is the author of eighteen novels including A Summer Bird-Cage, The Millstone, The Peppered Moth, The Red Queen, The Sea Lady and most recently, the highly acclaimed The Pure Gold Baby. She has also written biographies, screenplays and was the editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature. She was appointed CBE in 1980, and made DBE in the 2008 Honours list. She was also awarded the 2011 Golden PEN Award for a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature. She is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd.

Drabble famously has a long-running feud with her novelist sister, A.S. Byatt. The pair seldom see each other, and each does not read the books of the other.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a tricky book to review because I have my reasons for liking and not liking it - but I don't want to give away any of the surprises. I read this online, so, I had a shock when - scroll, scroll, blank pages - and - Oh!

If I'd had an actual book, I would probably have thrummed through, and noticed what I certainly did not, with the online copy. Drabble is playing around with structure - a lot. And coincidentally I have just read Clarice Lispector's 'The Hour of the Star', which is an odd serendipity, because Drabble does more or less exactly what Lispector does in terms of structure.
Like Lispector, Drabble plays around with her narrators.

The Seven Sisters opens -
PART ONE
Her Diary

The diary ends at page 163 which is just over the half-way point of 311 pages, and continues with:

PART TWO
Italian Journey

Part one is the set up and it's a pleasure to read; I always like first person narratives - we have full access to the thoughts and feelings of our narrator and in this case, she provides a comprehensive view of her past but is unsure of how she would like her life to go on. Our middle-aged narrator, appears to provide a regular story - but then she does these little jumps and flights - which should provide a warning! Her local Health Club, in Ladbroke Grove, London becomes a highlight and focus of her week. Previously she had taken literature classes in the old Victorian building but it is converted into a modern gym with a swimming pool 'in the sky' and she is offered a reduced cost membership. Our narrator comments on the polite staff, who always welcome her, using her name, but sometimes they mispronounce it. The result of this meandering comment on the use of her name is that is that we are eager to hear what it is, but nope, her name is withheld. If you are a watchful reader this should give you a good idea of things to come.

By the time I had reached the mid-point (in pages) I was starting to worry about the closed diary format. It's extremely hard to carry off a whole narrative, or book in diary mode, and it becomes increasingly obvious that the writer is going to have to offer some other narrative structure. Our elderly lady who has had to start afresh in London, having left her errant husband in Suffolk, begins to meet several new people. She enters into various new activities, visits places and risks new experiences. Her new acquaintances, Anaïs, Mrs Jerrold and others from the Vergil class raise an enticing canvas of fresh fields, and then her friends from the past, nosy-parker Sally, boarding-school friend, Julia, now a glamorous actress/writer and middle daughter Ellen all pay visits, and it becomes more and more pressing that we should hear from these people directly. Instead we are constrained by the diary format; it's almost as if all these new people and experiences are just too lively and full and real for the restrictive perspective of the diary. Here is an entry in relation to the wicked Julia.

Page 85:
Julia will be here in an hour. I hope I look presentable. I wonder what she looks like, these days? I can't remember when I last saw her. But I think I've remembered the name of that French perfume she gave me all those years ago. It was called Evening in Paris, by Bourjois. I used to think the name was Bourgeois, and I thought that was a funny name for a Parisian product. But it wasn't. It was Bourjois. I wonder if it still exists. If it does, it must be very out of fashion. I wonder if she remembers that gift as well as I do. We didn't have so many things in those days. There weren't so many things to have. There was more to look forward to, but less to possess. It's the other way around now.
A dark, purple-blue glass bottle. A treasure. The fizzy water at Mr Gordano Black's comes in dark blue bottles. It's a good strong clear colour. We didn't have bottled water in the old days. We drank water from the tap.
I'm wearing my old Liberty-print wool dress. Martha says it makes me look mumsy. I can't help that. What am I supposed to look like, at my age?

So Julia came and Julia went. What a very strange woman she is. And what strange things she spoke of. I wonder what to make of it. There is some meaning in it, but I do not yet know what it might me.

I mean - at this point we are literally screaming to know what Julia might have had to say - FOR HERSELF!


Because I know of the plans, and proposals for their adventure from Part one, I am not particularly surprised to see the title of Part Two - Italian Journey, but I am on the edge of my seat as to HOW the story will be told. Or in fact WHO might continue the story? What is our writer going to do to shift out of the closed world of the diary? Drabble switches into an omniscient narrator - one who has access to the thoughts and motivations of the seven primary characters. This voice is often referred to as Third Person narration. It starts out well, the change of perspective is certainly enlarging and engaging, but then it quickly becomes extraordinarily tedious.

I couldn't believe how difficult this became to read - and I had to ask myself at this point - is Drabble doing this deliberately? There are some really boring details - the boat journey, who sleeps in which Cabin etc. and details about a poor quality meal and boat entertainment. I was literally grinding through these pages - and wondering what on earth had happened to the plot- where on earth was she going to take this story of the seven women, who are following in Aeneas's footsteps as recounted by Vergil. Our present day ladies fly to Tunis to visit the site of Carthage and then they travel by boat, actually a modern ferry with their minibus onboard, to the Bay of Naples and disembark to go to Pozzuopoli, the Lake of Avernus, and the archaeological site of Cumae.

Drabble really pushes us to the limits of our readerly patience with this middle section and I'm not entirely sure, having reached the end, that we've been rewarded. There is no big denouément but maybe that's her point. We were supposed to enjoy the journey and not rush through it. In this book, as in life, the end goal is not the point, it is the journey that matters. Our life-journey, is made up of all the daily 'presents' the moments, the now, which make up that long journey. We have to learn to enjoy the present, despite not knowing how it will evolve or turn out.

Drabble is challenging that linear drive in her novel; which is quite a challenge as novels are always read for their narrative drive. Readers always want to know what happens next; how will our hero deal with the current situation and move on, get better, learn more, defeat the odds, prove her self the winner. In this story there is very much the sense of sitting still, (a lot of sitting in cafes and restaurants enjoying drinks and meals and conversation etc.) and I think this brings us to Aeneas - who is in fact one of the first anti-heros in literature.

Not many I suspect are aware of the idea that Vergil was writing against what was required of him by Emperor Augustus. His hero Aeneas is a descendent of the king and queen of Troy thus providing a true lineage for the founding of Rome and connecting the Romans with the ancient Greeks. Vergil, however, disliked his commission as much as his commissioner, Augustus who promised democracy but instead leaned to the Imperial. So, Vergil gives Aeneas some dubious qualities which make the reader question his assumed hero status. I can guess that Drabble's use of the Aeneid is a reinforcement of the same - a challenge to try and get away from this goal focus. Aeneas, for example is frequently blown off route. In fact he is endlessly derailed from his end mission.
And I think this is one of Drabble's goals (! ha) to create a sort of anti-hero of our narrator. It is not so much what our central character does as how she rethinks, or she re-views things and ultimately herself. A sort of self-deliverance. Not an external, but an internal journey.

And also the title - The Seven Sisters - we are meant to think of the constellation, The Pleiades - and the myth of how the seven daughters of Atlas are thrown into the sky by Zeus to protect them from the hunter Orion.

What is the purpose of this referent to an ancient myth - are women's stories always formed and controlled by men? In this story - men are radically excluded, apart from the elegant Mr Barclay, who is savagely beaten up when his wife, Cynthia is away in Italy. What to say? Drabbles' Seven Sisters are completely capable of writing their own fulfilling and fascinating destinies without the intervention of any men at all.

Here's the bit at the beginning where Drabble maintains the conceit of someone writing a diary - there's no need to 'reveal' a name - to a diary. But us readers - we are reading 'the diary' and we are frustrated nonetheless. So, Drabble is pushing us to consider the significance of names and the power of naming. Who tells the story? Who names names has power.

Indoors in the Club, it's another world. It's all lightness, brightness and politeness. Hello, they say, using my name. Sometimes it's the only time I hear my name all day, the only time I speak to another person all day. I know they know my name only because it's written on my Club Pass, which they have to swipe every time I go in, but hearing it does remind me of who I am. It reminds me that I have a name. Sometimes they pronounce my name a little oddly, making me sound more like an illness than a woman, but I can't blame them for that. It's not a very common name. Or not in these parts. It may have been popular once.
They use -or try to use - my full name, not my nickname. They treat me as a grown woman. To them, I am an old woman. They do not know that once I was a child. The receptionists are very Smart Casual. They are well dressed and polite.
There are some beautiful women in the club. . . .

It's very pleasant to re-read those paragraphs from the beginning, because it gives a very nice arc, of how our narrator has grown. That voice above speaks of isolation, fear, loneliness, and defeat. Our narrator suffered loss and at the beginning, in her lonely diary is battling with anger and depression. The anger actually makes it a lot of fun to read, but you can see how she is indeed a woman without a name. She has literally lost her sense of who she is.

By the end, however, she has claimed her name and most certainly become the director of her own narrative. It is a very, pleasant arc to follow. FIVE stars Drabble, I forgive you that tedious middle section, which I understand is part of the structure which seals the authenticity of our narrator, as well as part of the process by which she regains her identity. It is through her writing - remember, the internal journey, and the reading of many other stories: those of her friends and companions, and well as the myths and legends of the past, that our narrator is able to see and make herself anew.

[SarahC · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is my favorite Margaret Drabble book to date. For this book, I would love to meet her, buy her dinner, and tell her how in awe of her I am. It is about how to love life, literature, change, yourself. There is nothing standard about this tale -- Margaret Drabble clearly raises the bar. It is wit defined.

[Lyn Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came away from our book discussion group last week with a much better understanding of The Seven Sisters than I had when I finished reading it myself.

I was puzzled by the structure, the triple voice shift, the apparent death of the main character (reported apparently by a cranky daughter) and what seemed to be a rather half-hearted winding up of the story.

There's no doubt about the first section - here we have a woman in her mid-late 50s, divorced by her husband, living in a drab part of London - a far cry from her comfortable middle class life as wife of a public (private) school head master in the country. Through her diary entries we see her trying to overcome her depression and loss of identity, beginning to build a new life, then organising a group of women she knows (not sure we can call them friends, really) to take a dream trip to Algeria and Italy in the path of Aeneas.

From there on you don't quite know what's real and what's not.
There are many classical allusions, some of which I did understand, but none of us could identify which aspect of the many stories of the seven sisters (possibly the Pleiades?) had led Drabble to choose her title.

Three of our group have trained as counsellors and they were able to clarify some of the symbolism.
Without going into details of the plot, here were some of their suggestions:

Money symbolises energy, a catalyst for change. In this case its sudden appearance makes the trip possible.

The trip itself is a journey, during which more changes are initiated.

Death is commonly associated with renewal.

Using the daughter to narrate the section describing her mother's death, and their difficult relationship, is very similar to a technique used in some forms of therapy, where say person A, here the mother, may tell a story from her point of view, and then to tell it again from the point of view of person B, here the daughter.

So, overall, what we have is a book about the rebuilding of self for a woman whose life has fallen apart, who sees herself as whining, miserable and a failure, but who has taken a great initiative to use her unexpected windfall to begin a journey that gives pleasure to her and others, who has begun to leave her whining self behind and to enter a new phase of life.

Thanks Fran and Mollie and Susie. It was a wonderful discussion.

[David Franks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why do I enjoy Margaret Drabble’s books so much? I realised one day, when I was reading a passage in one of her books, it’s partly because she’s not Jane Austen. I started off, a young man, enthralled by Jane Austen, read and re-read her books until I knew them by heart. I played the Jane Austen game with like-minded friends: what did Mr Woodhouse recommend that Mrs Bates should eat at his evening party; what did Anne Elliot and Captain Benwick discuss at the dinner at the Harville’s house at Lyme Regis? But doubts creep in. Would I have liked to be married to a woman like Lizzie Bennett? She was rather conceited, not something in a woman’s character that can easily change. Then Margaret Drabble opened my eyes. In the Waterfall, she has her central character, a woman, saying “How I dislike Jane Austen. How I deplore her desperate wit. Her moral tone dismays me. Emma got what she deserved, in marrying Mr Knightley. What can it have been like, in bed with Mr Knightley? Sorrow awaited that woman: she would have done better to steal Frank Churchill, if she could.” The pseudo-closure, the false happy ending of Jane Austen, there’s nothing like that in Margaret Drabble’s novels. Jane Austen’s characters are flawed, and flawed in a way that is unconvincing. Lizzie Bennett, in Pride and Prejudice, is fundamentally a nice woman: she has to be redeemed from her savage wit by an unpleasant, proud man who turns about to be a nice man in disguise. The central characters of Drabble’s novels are often women who share the same characteristics. They are clever, intelligent, educated women, often professionals. They live in a man’s world, and they are ambivalent about their relationships with men, whether lovers or husbands or friends. They are ambivalent about their children, or the possibility of children, and they are ambivalent about themselves, and what they can achieve in life. Very often they are not really likeable, but they are real women. Drabble does not shy away from unsympathetic characters. Drabble’s novels span a lifetime, her own lifetime, starting off with her first protagonist, published in 1963, a brilliant young woman just graduated from Cambridge, as Drabble was herself, and growing older with Drabble, going through the usual histories of marital breakdown, young children, trying again.

We can start off with the joke. Candida Wilton is the central character of The Seven Sisters. Candida means white, and there is the implication of reliability, truth-telling, and that’s just about the last thing that Candida Wilton is. She is the ultimate unreliable witness.

As Drabble’s books progressed she explored more and more the way in which different points of view can tell the story and throw light on her protagonist’s character, and The Seven Sisters took this on to a new level. The first section of the novel is a diary, written in the first person, but the authorial voice begins to intrude. ‘I’m quite interested,’ she writes, ‘in the whining resentful martyred tone I seem to have adopted. … I will try to shake it off. I will try to disown it.’ And later she writes ‘I see I have mentioned Andrew three times already in this diary. I think that means I should try to give some account of him and of my marriage to him. I’m not sure I will be able to tell the truth.’ This isn’t strictly an authorial voice, but it’s an authorial slant on the first person.

The second part of the novel is written in the third person, and it portrays Candida as rather more likeable. She was rather harsh on herself in the first section. She isn’t quite as negative as she seemed to be, the story picks up, we meet some interesting characters, and the story develops.

The third part of the novel is a shock. We read that this is her daughter Ellen’s account, based on something found on Candida’s computer after her death. How did she die? We are beginning to wonder if she killed herself, and then we are told that she killed herself by drowning in the canal. Did she identify with Dido, Queen of Carthage, who killed herself, deserted by her lover Aeneas, just as Candida was deserted by her husband? This reaches near certainty with Candida’s musings about the Cumean Sybil, who tells her to be still, submit, this is the last height. But it isn’t so. It is not the last height. And she cannot submit. The third part was an exercise in self-criticism, and not very successful self-criticism either. Candida didn’t die, however. In an interview several years before she wrote Seven Sisters, she said ‘this is what we were put on earth to do, to endeavour in the face of the impossible.’ She’s the Quaker-educated child of left-wing middle-class parents with a strong social conscience. And the child of a neurotic mother.

The fourth part of the novel alternates between first person and third person, taking the story forward in a more modern way.

Some readers find this switching of points of view difficult. To me it illuminates how we understand someone, let’s call her Athene. We pick up hints from what Athene tells us herself, what other people say about her, what Athene herself says about what these other people have said, we frequently get it wrong, and we realise that Athene often does not understand herself anyway. And sometimes she is deliberately misleading. Did the Sibyls always tell the truth? We can’t know.

And what of the story? There isn’t actually much of a story, just about enough to hang the musings of Candida and her sisters on. Candida and her sisters follow the travels, and the travails, of Aeneas. The story of Aeneas is a terrible story, full of betrayal, failure and death. Why was this suffering inflicted on Aeneas and his companions? The Aeneid starts off with that question: “Tell me, Muse, how it all began. Why was Juno so outraged? Why did she force a man, so famous for his devotion, to brave such rounds of hardship, bear such trials?” And it isn’t just Aeneas who suffers. His lover Dido suffers so much that she kills herself. Everyone within Candida’s circle suffers, to some extent. Her children, and most of all, herself. Even her husband, shocked by Candida’s unexpected resilience, falters. Candida knows that this is her fault, at least in part.

A common feature of Drabble’s novels is that there is no closure, and, again, many readers find this difficult. But there isn’t closure in life. Many people who go through separation and divorce, and union with another partner learn in time that you don’t leave your problems behind, you take them with you, there’s no happy ever after. Many men move on to a new partner, to find that they’ve joined themselves to a woman who is more or less identical to the woman they left behind. There’s a rather charming touch in the fourth section when Candida is thinking about the man who has shown his interest. ‘There would have to be rules about bed,’ she thinks, harking back to ambiguities about her marital relationship with her husband. You wonder about this. Candida is no fool. She knows what her new man will want, and she’s wondering if she wants it herself, and she’s probably doubting if she does. In Jane Austen’s novel there is a false closure. Lizzie Bennett, and all the other heroines, find happiness, escaping from the cardboard villains, who turn to clever amusing, immoral women, but Jane Austen doesn’t even allow her heroines to have fun.

Drabble has come in for some very savage criticism from feminist writers for her persistence in seeing the relationship between men and women as more nuanced than some feminists maintain. ‘It’s no good blaming men for everything,’ she said in an interview. ‘Women are to blame as well. And there is something seriously wrong with the institution of marriage.’ She also persists in seeing peoples’ problems as a result of their past experience, particularly the influence of parents, rejecting the view that the problems a woman experiences are entirely due to a patriarchal society, or capitalism, or the commercial pressures to be slim, attractive, and so on. Candida is much given to musings about this.

Seven Sisters is a very literary novel. It isn’t necessary to know who the Seven Sisters are, the Pleiades, goddesses, daughters of Ajax and the sea nymph Pleione, who are proto-feminists, having affairs with many men and gods, and rejecting even Zeus’ overtures, not a wise thing even for a goddess to do, but if you do know this it enlarges understanding. At the end of the novel are the words ‘Stretch forth your hand, I say. Stretch forth your hand.’ This is Matthew, chapter 12 verse 13, Jesus healing the leper. ‘Then saith he to the man, Stretch forth thy hand. And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, as the other.’ Has Candida been healed? Candida would probably doubt that the leper had been healed. But in a sense Candida has been healed. She is reconciled to her daughters. She has begun to understand herself. At the end of part 2 there is what looks like a quotation: ‘Who is that waiting on the far shore? Is it her lover or her God?’ I’ve never been able to track this down, if it is a quotation. Is it Dido, meeting Aeneas in the underworld, and turning away from him, unforgiving?

Drabble shows us the sisters’ struggles, rather tired, slightly drunk, with the Latin of Book Four of the Aeneid, and the reproaches that Mercury addressed to Aeneas. They wrestle with the byways of Latin grammar and discover what oblite means. And then, the words fall into place. ‘Alas, you, of your kingdom and fortunes forgetful,’ a reproach to themselves as well as to Aeneas, for they have not achieved all that they wished. But they have struggled, they have persevered. That is what they were put on earth to do.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would genuinely enjoy sitting down for a cup of coffee with those readers who enjoyed this book; I found it dispiriting and tedious and would like to understand what I missed in my reading of this dreary tome.

If this was not a selection of my book club, I would not have made it through the first 75 pages and, as it was, I plodded along without much enthusiasm until the narrator appeared to change the course of her life.

Perhaps my challenge is that the narrator is a "lady of a certain age" and I (perhaps) should be able to identify with her. Hardly! I am not sure why Drabble felt it was important to devote 100-plus pages to the melancoly musings of a lonely divorcee. Anyway, I didn't like it; I didn't get it; and after two Drabble novels, I am not game for a third.

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Seven Sisters is a superb novel by Margaret Drabble. Seven characters – who all happen to be women – eventually find themselves on a classically-inspired Mediterranean journey. It is a trip of literary and perhaps psychological significance. Thus extracted from their respective comfort zones – if comfort is a relevant term to describe their life-scarred lives – they react individually to their collective experience in quite different ways, differences driven by personality and personal history. But almost defiantly they remain a group determined to share the experience.

The central character of the book, Candida Wilton, became a Virgilian. Attending a class to study the Aeneid provided the label and the partially adopted identity. There were others involved, of course, all under the splendid wing of an aging retired classics teacher.

Candida has moved to London from Suffolk. Approaching sixty, she finds herself single again, divorced from a husband who has sought more tender pastures in which to graze. Occasionally she blames herself for his desertion, especially when reality focuses attention on herself. Somewhat surprisingly Candida is also estranged from her three daughters, an estrangement for which she usually takes responsibility. Reality may have offered a different interpretation and indeed at one point we believe we are getting one. Like may aspects of reality, the experience proves illusory.

So now alone, after the gentility and perhaps predictability of rural married life, Candida’s move to a small flat in a none too salubrious area of west London presents something of a challenge. As she embarks upon her fight for independence, Candida keeps a diary in which she records events, reflections, descriptions, and almost anything that is commonplace. She swims, she prepares skimpy meals for one, starts to recognise the local down-and-outs and attends her Virgil class. In time she accommodates her loneliness as well as her past.

When an unexpected windfall allows some flexibility in her life, she invites her acquaintances and friends on a journey to Carthage and Naples to follow in the footsteps of their man, Aeneas. The woman they engage as their guide becomes the seventh of the sisters, all of who are women of varied and contrasting backgrounds. They are determined to share their experience, but individually respond to it in remarkably different ways. But collectively they leave Dido to her funeral pyre in pursuit of their wandering sailor.

The Seven Sisters is not a novel with a linear plot where events form the story. Margaret Drabble is a much better writer than that. Her novel is simply about the lives of the women involved, how they cope differently with surviving each day and how they approach life’s demands and rewards. It is Candida’s perspective that is always at the centre of the narrative, and it is through her estimations and reactions that we come to know the others. And so vivid is the portrayal of these lives that they almost leave the page to come alive. They seem to have rather more than three dimensions. Inasmuch as it is possible to know anyone, we feel we know all of these women by the end of the trip. That in itself is surprising because Candida at least is not even sure if she knows herself.

In Margaret Drabble’s hands, no life is ordinary and it is the experience of life, itself, to read her engaging and moving novel. The Seven Sisters is no more or less than a remarkable study in character. And Aeneas left Dido. Is there anything new under the sun?

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m on a roll for reading (or setting aside) what I’m finding as awful books. I have read another by Drabble and like it and was prepared to like this one. I got just shy of halfway and am throwing in the towel. This is another where not much happens. It is not navel-gazing, but perhaps the opposite, where the first person narrator comments on things/people she sees in her life post-divorce. The writing style is fine. Usually I wouldn’t complain about lack of plot, but I think I’m ready for a thriller.

[Ellis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh how I wanted to like this more than I did. It begins as the diary of an older woman named Candida, who's just gotten a divorce and is living alone, estranged from her children. She makes all sorts of lovely honest statements that are full of self-pity and hyper-awareness; about the girl at her Health Club who may or may not have cancer, "I can't ask after her, because I don't know her name . . . And anyway, I don't care. I'm curious, but curiosity has nothing to do with caring." She comes in to some unexpected money and decides to round up a few of her other older women friends to take a trip. She decides to leave her diary behind.

At this point, Part Two, the tense changes from first person to some sort of odd third person present tense. Okay. It's jarring at first, but I got used to it. I ultimately assumed that it was Margaret Drabble writing this part as the Narrator. But then Part Two ends and Part Three is written from the first person perspective of Candida's daughter Ellen. Ellen is pretty annoying. Candida has supposedly drowned herself and Ellen is mad at how she's portrayed in her mother's diary. In Part Four, it turns out that the whole book is still Candida's dairy, that she faked her death and the stuff written by her daughter. Then she swoops in and out of first person and third person, and although I pressed on, the tense changes were too much for me. I could've read her original diary for days and days, though. I'm willing to keep on with Margaret Drabble because her writing is pretty exquisite. This is just way too gimmicky.

[Ruthiella · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first Margaret Drabble novel and I really enjoyed it. It is framed as a diary of a late middle aged woman, Candida Wilton, who is forced to start her life over after a divorce and a move from countrified Suffolk to gritty London. Candida is estranged from her three daughters and has no close friends. But in her writing, she gives herself away if you read between the lines. She isn’t the wronged woman in quite the way it might seem superficially. She is also often, perhaps unintentionally (Candida, not Margaret Drabble!) funny.

When Candida’s adult education class on Virgil’s The Aeneid is disbanded due to a health club taking over the building, her life begins slowly to change for the better as she is forced to find companionship outside of the rigid boundaries she has set for herself. In a slight way, I was reminded of Enchanted April in reading this since there is a sort of blossoming that happens when Candida takes a vacation in Southern Europe…but only slightly. This was a coming of age story but set in late middle age rather than the teenage years.

[Ensiform · Rating 2 out of 5]

Candida Wilton, a divorcee of a certain (past middle-aged) years, lives alone in an apartment in London. Writing a diary on her new laptop, she tells of her estrangement from her daughters and her husband’s infidelity in analytical, impersonal tones. She makes a new friend or two and puts up with the occasional attentions of some old friends whom she has mixed feelings for. Then she comes into a large sum of money, and funds a trip to Tunisia in Anaeas’ shoes, bringing six other women in her new life. It is at this point that it switches from first person to third, and then the narrator changes, more than once.

I was drawn into the first half of this book, enjoying the prose and the character's thoughts. Drabble is a skillful, elegant prose stylist, and I enjoyed her account of a woman who is clearly lacking in affect to some degree, but trying to forge into a strange life and a new identity. But then Drabble plays more than one silly clichéd trick with the narration – something earth-shattering happened! Oh no, wait, it didn’t, I was lying. For what reason? None, as far as I can see. But at that point the narration is tainted, and all the growth and development that made up the novel, as well as any future character development, is called into question. So we have the diary of a liar, I suppose. To what end, I can’t fathom – it certainly doesn’t help us appreciate the character or the plot, and there’s no control narrator that we can compare notes with. This is a well-written book, capturing the tone of an intriguing, flawed but very likeable character. And it’s utterly pointless.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

After some months abroad in far-flung literary landscapes, I tend to return to Margaret Drabble as a sort of literary comfort food, though since this may be the 17th of her 18 novels I have read, it may soon become time to look elsewhere.
By contrast to what I think of as the "writer's workshop" sort of writers who take on the personae of people entirely alien to their actual experience, I rather like the fact that the protagonist of any given Drabble novel is almost always a cultivated middle-class Englishwoman within a few years of whatever age she happens to be. This 2002 book has a 60-ish woman, divorced late in life and on her own for the first time, having, to everyone's surprise, moved from the country to the Ladbroke Grove area of London.
Most of Drabble's novels pick a classical or mythological theme which intertwines and resonates with the events of the story - this time it is The Aeneid, a fine choice. Her narrator is timid but also perspicacious and funny - another example (comparable to Iain Banks' Dead Air) of the author using the main character to voice all of her asides and aperçus about contemporary life.

[Kara Babcock · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went into this book without high expectations. Not only did I know little about Margaret Drabble or The Seven Sisters but I acquired this from the same person who gave me Love the One You’re With , so … yeah. Provenance aside, this book turned out to be immensely satisfying. Drabble creates a main character and narrator who is fallible and sympathetic, and the story she tells is firmly grounded in realism even as she carefully interrogates the recesses of the human heart.

The back of the book informs me that this is a story about Candida Wilton. Without this context, however, I would not discover Candida’s name until well after the midpoint—or at least, if she mentions it in her diary before then, I totally missed it. By the time I first detected it, I was actively waiting for an occurrence. Drabble’s character is “she”, largely nameless, but not wanting in personality for it. Candida is an excellent narrator, balancing the need to tell us what happened with her thoughts and feelings about why it happened. She confesses to us her feelings about her divorce, about her social life, about growing old. Drabble has the form down: as voyeurs to Candida’s diary we’re privy to the most personal details of her life, but there’s also clearly a larger plot at work.

I suppose if I must summarize The Seven Sisters in a sentence, I would call it a story about a woman regaining her independence in her middle age. (Drabble refers to this as her “Third Age,” when her children have matured and left home and one can once again pursue one’s own lifestyle and agenda with a sense of newfound freedom.) According to Candida’s version of events, when she was not-so-happily married, she was very much “Mrs. Wilton,” and in that sense she reminds me of the diary-keeping Mrs. Bentley from As for Me and My House . Although she does not go into too much detail, Candida talks about her role as wife to Andrew Wilton, headmaster of a private school. Her social life is the carefully scripted one of a hostess, a fundraiser, a school asset. So as we meet Candida, she has begun the process of constructing a new identity, a new sense of self and self-worth. In Suffolk she was Mrs. Wilton. Who is she in London?

Watching Candida grow into an independent person and regain some joie de vivre is a pleasure. She’s not whiny, which is often the downfall of characters in need of such improvement. Occasionally she discusses her loneliness and the distance she feels from her family, acquaintances, and “friends”, but it’s more with regret than self-pity. And as the story progresses, we see Candida begin to make an effort to improve her lot. She reaches out, forges new relationships, and even attempts to rescue old ones. In the end she even has a fairly normal interaction with two of three estranged daughters—so good for her! Furthermore, Drabble gives Candida a voice that is opinionated without sounding too shrill or too haughty. She reminds me a lot of the characters that Margaret Atwood writes, such as Elaine from Cat’s Eye . Fans of Atwood might appreciate Candida’s similar wry takes on the effects of aging, both on the body and on one’s social life.

Candida also embodies the unreliable narrator in a very dramatic way. I won’t spoil it, but suffice it to say that Drabble drops two narrative reversals on us in quick succession as she changes the narrative perspective three times. The first such reversal made me go, “Whoa. Did not see that coming.” When the second followed hot on its heels, my exclamation was along the lines of, “You have to be kidding me!” It’s true that I’m probably more credulous than most readers—I tend not to predict the identity of the killer or see endings coming—so take it with a grain of salt when I say that Drabble blew me away with these games. What you can take to the bank, though, is my enjoyment over being surprised. Normally I tend to criticize unconventional narrative strategies; when it comes to literary style, I like established and familiar. But Drabble just shows that there are always exceptions to these preferences; it’s fine to shake things up if you can pull it off!

Drabble can. The back of my book also has blurbs, including one from the Montreal Gazette that calls Drabble “an uncanny literary intelligence.” Normally I make fun of these kinds of blurbs and explain why they are undeserved … but I can’t in this case, because I have to agree. Drabble takes a plot that could be, in the hands of a merely competent writer, run-of-the-mill and OK. And she transforms it, by adding layers of literary allusions and emotional resonance, into something remarkable. To say that Candida comes into some money and uses it to take some of her friends on a trip tracing part of The Aeneid—a story for which they share a common affection and admiration—does not do justice to the depth of this novel.

This isn’t about a bunch of middle-aged women bonding and finding themselves on a jaunt to the Mediterranean. There’s no fluffy romance here or quota of knowing glances as the characters trade stories among one another and laugh at all the right moments. Sure, sometimes it feels like the story is moving a little too smoothly, and despite a few instances of genuine suspense, nothing all that bad seems to happen. But as this unofficial Virgil tour group makes their way from Tunis to Naples, everyone comes of out of her shell, and we see her in a different light—Candida especially. Just as I was beginning to get comfortable with the somewhat meek but fascinating Candida of the diary, Drabble turns it all around and asks me to get to know her all over again. But it’s worth it.

Finally, I love the ending of this book because it’s so non-committal. It doesn’t contrive to make Candida live happily ever after—but it doesn’t doom her to a life of solitude either. She doesn’t miraculously make up with her daughters, but the lines of communication have opened, and she’s made a start. That’s what the end is: a new beginning, the true start of Candida’s new life after divorce. It’s hopeful without being trite, and it’s realistic without resorting to unnecessary grimness or grittiness that seems to be the hallmark of realism these days.

The Seven Sisters is very much a character-driven book. It’s light on dialogue and heavy on description and introspection. But it knocked me over, in more ways than one, with Drabble’s skilled characterization and nimble negotiations of narrative. Having finished this book, my only outstanding question is: which of her novels do I read next?

[Jo Ring · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bit different but enjoyed it. Would like to do the Italian Journey.

[kymdotcom · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was bad for me. All I want to do now is wank about learning Latin and go back to Naples.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We hadn't had time to bulid up an easy extra-mural social life" (12).
"...clouds that lay parallel above the horizon like Magritte baguettes" (19).
"Writers have to tell. It's what they do. It's what they are for" (32).
"She digresses to the forbidden subject of solitaire" (35).
“The machine hasn’t got a cliché-spotter, but its cool objective format throws them into high relief” (52).
“At first sight, the produce looked varied and quite tempting, but on closer inspection the charm palled” (57).
“I felt an intensity of anticipation for I knew not what” (60).
“She didn’t describe it very well, as vivid narration is not her forte” (65).
“I did nothing to correct this impression. I am not the kind of person to have close friends who pop in, but I think I wish I were that kind of person, and the illusion of being it is better than nothing” (66).
“I don’t much like the word ‘nibbles’. It reduces us to mice or hamsters. Sally seems very fond of it. Once Sally gets hold of a word, she does it to death. That day was all gigolos and nibbles” (70).
“I made her some coffee—real coffee, not instant, though I didn’t use my antique wooden grinder. I have never used my antique wooden grinder. It is useless” (73).
“Maybe all Classics teachers are excellent. They sing in the dark and shore up the ruins” (83).
“In other words, says Julia, the media are tired of Tuscany. They gave birth to it and now like Saturn they wish to devour it” (90-91).
“That’s the ontological argument. We wouldn’t seek God if he didn’t exist. I find it more attractive than the teleological, which argues that we must be going somewhere because everything has a design and a purpose. I don’t see why we must be going anywhere and I don’t think we are. But we are driven to the quest. I don’t think that proves God exists, either, but it does prove that there is something deeply unsatisfactory about the human condition” (97).
“And anyway, I don’t care. I’m curious, but curiosity has nothing to do with caring” (110).
"We had a long, nostalgic talk about our forcibly truncated Virgil class" (120).
"There is a three-quarter moon lying drunkenly on its side" (124-125).
"The excitement of arrival had worn off, my brave and falsely high spirits had sustained several assaults, and I had not yet learnt how to cope with the length of the day" (126).
"I must congratulate myself upon my courage, for no one else will" (126).
"Or did I want to be kind? That seems unlikely. The human heart is black, so kindness cannot have been the explanation for my deeds" (151).
“The stewardess offers to remove the offensive little boxlet of green leaves” (177).
“They arrive in Africa and meet their stately guide” (179).
“…she had placed it thus to avoid the spaghetti, and is clearly pleased with the effect” (218).
“…Mrs Jerrold relates the cautionary tale of the death of the notorious risk-taker James Pope-Hennessy, who had been murdered at this maisonette at Number Nine Ladbroke Grove by the ‘ruffianly associates of the unscrupulous youths with whom he chose to consort’. (This quaint old phrase, she says, comes from his entry in the Dictionary of National Biography…” (243).
“(She cannot be sure that he does not meet her eyes, for she does not dare to meet his)” (288).
“Nobody save the neon-lit dentist has touched the skin of her face for years” (290).
“Mr Barclay sometimes joins them these days, for he has wisely given up his solitary forays into the night, or so he says: they politely tease him when he makes deliberately ignorant remarks about Film, or he drop bits of what he insists on calling Feng Shui from his chopsticks. Mr Barclay has decided to dress for these occasions as an honorary lady: he has acquired a priest’s cassock, in which he thinks he looks very fetching” (296).

[Lesley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the first Margaret Drabble book I’ve read. I enjoyed parts of it, appreciated the skill of her writing and the humour, but parts annoyed me.

She obviously ‘gets’ the 60ish woman and the characters of the ‘Seven Sisters’ were well drawn. I felt I had met aspects of them in friends, family and even myself.

I liked the realism of Candida’s life and enjoyed the way she appeared to take a pigeon-step approach to her voyage of self-discovery. Her character made no miraculous growth and she gained few insights into herself as she got to grips with the continued banality of her new life. The portrayal of her passionless marriage worked for me, as did her unkindness about her friend, Sally. I didn’t quite get the disinterest in her children, maybe because I’ve never met a woman like that. Bad relationships, love mingled with dislike, would have worked for me, but disinterest didn’t. I understood what the author was telling me about Candida’s middle-class, prejudiced, snobbish character without the need to hammer it home with a heavy handed overuse of French expressions (about 5 times on one page).

The book’s division into four parts just missed working for me. I liked the changes in voice in parts 1 & 2. The diary form was just right for all those narrator’s observations which made me smile. The descriptions of Candida’s Ladbroke Grove neighbourhood were well done, with lots of quirky details, as were her attempts to start a new life by taking an evening class and then joining the health club which takes over the premises. I thought it was a bit of clichéd plot device to have Candida win the lottery to fund her trip.

The third person narration for the journey to Italy gave part 2 a feel of Maggie Smith and Judy Dench in a soft focus tale of spinsterly friendship. The sharp braking Drabble put on the end of part 2 as the trip was cut short, confused me. The plot veering off made me wonder if I hadn’t been concentrating as I read it, so I had to read it again.
I felt put out by the shift in POV in part 3, mainly because I was upset that Candida had committed suicide when I had been given no clues that her life was that bad. It could have been an interesting twist and I could have accepted the revelation that most of what we had learnt about Candida’s life so far was all lies, if it weren’t for part 4.
For me, this pretending to be written by Candida's least estranged daughter was a literary mechanism that didn't quite work and I actually felt cheated by part 4. It didn’t feel right for the Candida now in my head to be imagining what it would be like to write from her daughter's point of view and what it would be like to fake her own death.

At the end of it all, there were a few too many writerly indulgences for it to be a really good read for me.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

At the end of it all, I'm really unsure what this book is about... the salvation to be found in good company? Redemption of the meek through a heady dose of independence? Travel therapy? Why I'm glad I took Latin instead of a more "practical" language?
Forgive my levity, I am truly muddled - M. Drabble is the author of two of my favorite books of all time: the Realms of Gold and the Radiant Way. Both followed interesting characters, unrolled captivating plots and underscored all with questions (if not answers) of class, society, politics and gender. Chick lit with intelligence and humor, and without cloying pretensions. But following this tale is like unraveling the threads of several tangled balls of yarn while putting up with every manner of writer's self-indulgence: the unedited prattle of free-flowing consciousness and relentless rhetorical questions until it becomes clear that the central figure, Candida, is the least clearly drawn of the book. The others, though interesting, evolve late and exist only as a sort of marinade in which, it is hoped, she will absorb a bit of their flavor.
Frankly, I continued to hope for a happy coalescence and finished it, but this book by anyone else would not have kept me long.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am an American and a huge fan of the very English writer Margaret Drabble who was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire. I love her sister A.S. Byatt too. I'm sure I would love her entire family. What I really love is her delicious use of the English language, but then she is an editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature. She makes the short list of my absolutely favorite writers. And in this book she is at the top of her form.

“The Seven Sisters” is a book that speaks directly to me. It is a wonderful novel about starting over late in life. After being married many years our protagonist’s unfaithful husband finds “a replacement” and kicks her to the curb. She is estranged from her daughters. Having skidded down the economic ladder she is frightened, but also excited by her unexpected freedom.

Ms. Drabble draws a portrait of loneliness and the solitary life, and of fate. She also writes here of the joys of friendship, and travel. As always, I love the English setting (in this case London). Mostly I love the character development, and the many interesting tid-bits about classical Italy. Especially I love her gorgeous vocabulary. I haven't enjoyed a book this much in a very long time.

[Kieran Walsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting coming of age book, which I tend to enjoy, typically. The protagonist, however, is an unlikely subject - recently divorced headmaster's wife, with a disinterested attachment to her three children and recent arriveal in London. Along the way Candidia's life becomes rather cliched. She 'comes into' money, joins a health club, takes a night class, makes a set of new friends and goes on a cruise to Italy.
The literary twist, however, is that her character barely evolves from her boringly middle class, middle aged semi prejudiced middle English attitude. Candidia keeps a diary and this is the first inkling into something interesting. Its brilliant in its 'un-typicality'. There's nothing particularly genius in its reflectiveness. The banality of it all is the book's saving grace - because behind latin grammar, drinks of gin and water (!), a cruise to Naples, there's a clearly identifiable character in Candidia - one that the reader wants to succeed and make a proverbial fresh start.

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Candida Wilton is stuck. Her husband has left her. She is estranged from her children. She has moved off to the wilds of London and all that is keeping her grounded are her visits to the health club and writing in her journal. And then, quite unexpectedly, her friends.

As one becomes...well, let's just say it...OLDER...it is nice to reflect on the experiences of others who have passed through this time and lived to tell of their adventures. Books are a very nice way to visit these hinterlands unscathed and this is a particularly good journey through. Recommended.

(I wouldn't be a good reviewer---not that I'm making that boast for myself, but anyway---if I didn't at least hint at the cool way Drabble uses shifting point of views in this story. That's all I'll say for now, but see what you think.)

[Tara · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was just a random book I picked up at the library based on its praise listed on the back cover, but it was so incredibly boring and weird, I quit reading about 1/3 through and skimmed the rest. It's about this lady whose husband cheats on her, probably multiple times, and finally divorces her so he can marry someone else. The unfortunate ex-wife must now fend for herself in the latter years of life - never having been forced to live alone before. We hear all about her health gym, her grocery trips, her apartment...it's all written in journal format, and then she fakes her own death in it - she pretends her daughter is now writing, then comes back with a 'just kidding!' Are we supposed to feel sympathy for her or wonder if she's a lunatic? Bizarre.

[Deborah Lynch · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first Margaret Drabble. It's hard to say why you don't pick up an author sometimes - none of her books appealed to me more than what was already on my reading list. Well now I will be reading more Margaret. This book was a strange journey. So well written - the character of Candida Wilton emerging and disappearing as she writes her pseudo diary. It's almost a mystery, trying to work out what is real and what's not. Somehow all the other characters emerge too and what starts out as a fairly negative tone shifts slightly. By the end of the book I think nothing would have surprised me. It was such a great portrayal of how we are perceived by others and how we interpret them and their actions. It could have been terribly depressing in less skilled hands.

[Emma · Rating 1 out of 5]

I do not understand how this book was approved for publishing. It was boring, the main character was unlikeable. It changed from first person to third and back to first. The main character admits to lying in her diary (this is written in diary format) There was no point to the story. I thought it would be like Wendy Harmer's Roadside Sisters. It was not. The main character did not change or grow. There was none of the promised humour.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This, the first work I have read by Drabble left me with mixed feelings. This work traces Candida (all sorts of allusion and inferences can be made becasue of this characters name), a recent divorcee as she moves to London and slowly accumulates a diverse collection of friends. This group ultimately plans, and travels on a joint holiday to greece and other mediterranean venues.
The novel is partitioned into a couple of distinct sections, the first which is told in the first person, traces Candida as she explores London and meets friends. The second part is a third person telling of the vacation, then there is a third part, which is very odd - which seems to be a dream state imagining the main character as deceased, and a fourth short vague concluding section.
Overall, I lost interest or love for the book with the two last sections which I just found odd, and not very cohesive with the richly written earlier two portions. There were some delightful short turns of phrase which almost made it a worthwhile read on its own. Not enough for me to avoid other Drabble works, but neither will it prompt me to seek out other works.

[Melody · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's one of those books that make a nice little shiver run up your back and a tiny little squeeze of tears come out of your eyes when you finish. Don't know what the formula is to produce such an effect. I think it's at least one multi-faceted character, a little plot (doesn't have to be much - but I do require some plot) and some non-predictability. Yep. I think that might sum it up. And as for my reviews - I don't feel the need to report one bit of information about what the book's about. Just want to record my reaction.

[Gabi Coatsworth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Margaret Drabble, so I looked forward to reading this. its very much in her usual style, but it read like a book from the 50's or 60's. I was surprised to find references to cell phones and other 'modern' items in the book. In that sense it felt like an oddity. I think I liked it because the protagonist was about my age and lives in London I could relate to her. the structure is a little odd, but I rolled with the punches and enjoyed it.

[Emma Scattergood · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm still trying to make up my mind about this book. It is beautifully written, cleverly constructed and Drabble observes and captures the small details of relationships so well. Yet I was irritated that Candida's "change" came about by a sudden windfall and that being 60 was portrayed as being so depressing!

[Sandra Lawson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful story demonstrating that you're never too old. I've been a Margaret Drabble fan for years and it's interesting to see how her life experiences and her current age inform her subject matter.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book very different from anything that I've read for a very long time. While I semi struggled to get into the story, I somehow couldn't stop reading it either. I was rewarded because the ending of the story was very interesting!

[Maryellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting style and fresh approach to a story of a middle-age woman who finds it necessary to begin life again after divorce.