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The Waterfall
Poet Jane Gray, whose husband has left her shortly before the birth of their second child, falls passionately in love with James, the husband of Lucy - Jane's cousin and her friend. Their adulterous affair remains secret until a tragic accident exposes it to the world and they have to face the consequences! "The Waterfall" is a powerfull novel about sexual awakening and obsession - and the violent conflicts of maternal and sexual love.
239 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
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About the author
Margaret Drabble
160 books508 followersDame 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews
January 25, 2024
I'd write a hate review, except I remember nothing about the book except how much I hated it. In fact, it may be my very first hate read, the very first time I threw a book across the room and I say that quite literally. Of course, the professor was an ardent fan of Dribble, er, Drabble. Which may be why I remember nothing else about the book or that semester's class.
October 13, 2018
My thoughts on this book: first, I read through the other reviews and found that most other readers like myself, found the protagonist disagreeable, and I suppose the problem is that Jane is not the conventional narrator or indeed heroine. I think the plot could be adequately summoned up as a dissection of an affair. This in-depth analysis cutting through all the shams, delusions and accoutrements of a character in love, is the problem. Only the first 45 pages of a 239 page read are devoted to high-romance, and its conventions of passion and sex and it certainly is a powerful, exhilarating, and steamy first 45 pages.
And then as the narrator stipulates:
It won't of course do: as an account, I mean, of what took place. I tried, I tried for so long to reconcile, to find a style that would express it, to find a system that would excuse me, but I love couldn't do it, so here I am, resorting to that old broken medium. Don't let me deceive myself, I see no virtue in confusion, in honesty. Or is that too no longer true? Do I stand judged by that sentence? I cannot judge myself, I cannot condemn myself, so what can I make that will admit me and encompass me? Nothing, it seems, but a broken and fragmented piece: an event seen from angles, where there used to be one event, and one way only of enduring it.
And there dear readers you have the departure point for the rest of the novel. The narrator's voice flicks between first and third person view points; both are dense with analysis and psychological dissection. There are story elements as the affair progresses and eventually other primary characters are involved, namely the partners of the adulterous pair, and children and grandparents, and eventually a terrible denouement, an accident which brings everything into the open and all parties concerned are forced to examine the mess of disconnection.
The author named her character Jane Gray and undoubtedly there is an association with the historical Lady Jane Grey, who was queen for 9 days; accused of treason, and 7 months later beheaded. It seems an entirely appropriate reference - as our narrator Jane Gray, poetess and mother of two embarks on her affair with the husband, of her friend and cousin Lucy. Her pleasure and enjoyment last a similar short space and then she is overwhelmed with the threat of her punishment as surely there must be - most of the book is concerned with her sense of exposure and the inevitable pain she will cause to the others.
As we progress through the book, the narrator endlessly poses arguments or theories for her behaviour. She blames herself, she is responsible for her selfish and reproachable desires; she cannot justify her needs over the others. Her position is irresolvable, but she writhes and turns with increasing despair to find some means of justification for herself and James.
I felt split between the anxious intelligent woman, and the healthy and efficient mother - or perhaps less split than divided. I felt that I lived on two levels, simultaneously, and that there was no contact , no interaction between them...
And here is an example of the narrative in third person:
She felt she was taking part in some elaborate delicate ritual, and that if she broke some small unknown rule of it, by a false word or touch, by a treacherous mention of Lucy or Malcolm, by a murmur of indignation at his leaving, by a too willing acceptance of that same leaving, then he would be taken from her, she would forfeit him for her unwitting transgression.
Hmmm, 'unwitting' - she constantly undermines her own narrative by recapitulating; she says I was lying, or I deliberately missed that out. Basically she tortures herself and yet is unable to stop participating in the illicit connection.
Many times as I was reading this I felt confused. Why such a horrid protagonist, not even a truthful one? Was Drabble aiming to show how women are neglected and misunderstood, ill matched with a marriage partner and then trapped by children and convention into staying in a miserable situation, and of course no job, or resources of their own? Was this Drabble's theme?
Here is an example of the narrator trying to explain Jane's submersion in the throes of love, as if an outsider might be able to apply reason:
At times something in her would attempt to defy this entire subjugation; she would hear within her a mute and reasonable voice, another woman's voice, raised in protestation, asking him what he was up to, why on earth he wasn't at work like everyone else, whatever did he think he wanted her for, what did he intend to do with her now that he had got her; but these crude questions never reached the air, she silenced and suppressed them, afraid to disturb love by doubt.
A woman silenced by her need to have her love reciprocated - the need for love - how can we blame her?
I read all the way through to the end and found myself rooting for her every time she allowed love to dominate - yes it will work out, good things could arrive out of this mess etcetera, and then equally as she tipped the balance in the other direction I felt convinced she must withdraw, renounce her passion.
And then as we progress, her love is very sorely tried. No disclosures, but I started to feel the depth of her connection with James, and normally I hate any kind of sentimentality - oh we were so deeeeply in love, but Drabble neatly steers us through any mushy grounds with yes her cold analytical, clinical style, but it occurred to me that Jane's behaviour besotted and unreasonable and mad in many parts was actually genuine. She cares so little for her own comfort; she conceals incidents that are painful to herself; she despairs of ever finding a way to keep her love and yet she accepts all.
We are given hardly anything from James's perspective, just the odd bit of conversation, the odd description of his kindness and devotion to her, so it's hard to assess it if really, truly is love, from both sides.
However at the point where she confesses: "it would have been easier and neater if he had died"; this confession seems such an exposure that we start to see the strength of Jane Gray.
To conclude - a harsh format for love, but then a deliberate choice by the writer, with the aim I suppose of looking at affairs of the heart in a new light - a 20th century female perspective of falling in love.
By the end, I liked it - because of the stripping of mush - because of the unadulterated look at the bleakness of romantic love. It takes a writer who is not focussed on her sales digits to write in this manner. Drabble was only 29 when she wrote "The Waterfall", but there is nothing immature; there is no sense of experimentation, finding her voice, etc. Here is a writer in all of her power right from the start of her career.
And then as the narrator stipulates:
It won't of course do: as an account, I mean, of what took place. I tried, I tried for so long to reconcile, to find a style that would express it, to find a system that would excuse me, but I love couldn't do it, so here I am, resorting to that old broken medium. Don't let me deceive myself, I see no virtue in confusion, in honesty. Or is that too no longer true? Do I stand judged by that sentence? I cannot judge myself, I cannot condemn myself, so what can I make that will admit me and encompass me? Nothing, it seems, but a broken and fragmented piece: an event seen from angles, where there used to be one event, and one way only of enduring it.
And there dear readers you have the departure point for the rest of the novel. The narrator's voice flicks between first and third person view points; both are dense with analysis and psychological dissection. There are story elements as the affair progresses and eventually other primary characters are involved, namely the partners of the adulterous pair, and children and grandparents, and eventually a terrible denouement, an accident which brings everything into the open and all parties concerned are forced to examine the mess of disconnection.
The author named her character Jane Gray and undoubtedly there is an association with the historical Lady Jane Grey, who was queen for 9 days; accused of treason, and 7 months later beheaded. It seems an entirely appropriate reference - as our narrator Jane Gray, poetess and mother of two embarks on her affair with the husband, of her friend and cousin Lucy. Her pleasure and enjoyment last a similar short space and then she is overwhelmed with the threat of her punishment as surely there must be - most of the book is concerned with her sense of exposure and the inevitable pain she will cause to the others.
As we progress through the book, the narrator endlessly poses arguments or theories for her behaviour. She blames herself, she is responsible for her selfish and reproachable desires; she cannot justify her needs over the others. Her position is irresolvable, but she writhes and turns with increasing despair to find some means of justification for herself and James.
I felt split between the anxious intelligent woman, and the healthy and efficient mother - or perhaps less split than divided. I felt that I lived on two levels, simultaneously, and that there was no contact , no interaction between them...
And here is an example of the narrative in third person:
She felt she was taking part in some elaborate delicate ritual, and that if she broke some small unknown rule of it, by a false word or touch, by a treacherous mention of Lucy or Malcolm, by a murmur of indignation at his leaving, by a too willing acceptance of that same leaving, then he would be taken from her, she would forfeit him for her unwitting transgression.
Hmmm, 'unwitting' - she constantly undermines her own narrative by recapitulating; she says I was lying, or I deliberately missed that out. Basically she tortures herself and yet is unable to stop participating in the illicit connection.
Many times as I was reading this I felt confused. Why such a horrid protagonist, not even a truthful one? Was Drabble aiming to show how women are neglected and misunderstood, ill matched with a marriage partner and then trapped by children and convention into staying in a miserable situation, and of course no job, or resources of their own? Was this Drabble's theme?
Here is an example of the narrator trying to explain Jane's submersion in the throes of love, as if an outsider might be able to apply reason:
At times something in her would attempt to defy this entire subjugation; she would hear within her a mute and reasonable voice, another woman's voice, raised in protestation, asking him what he was up to, why on earth he wasn't at work like everyone else, whatever did he think he wanted her for, what did he intend to do with her now that he had got her; but these crude questions never reached the air, she silenced and suppressed them, afraid to disturb love by doubt.
A woman silenced by her need to have her love reciprocated - the need for love - how can we blame her?
I read all the way through to the end and found myself rooting for her every time she allowed love to dominate - yes it will work out, good things could arrive out of this mess etcetera, and then equally as she tipped the balance in the other direction I felt convinced she must withdraw, renounce her passion.
And then as we progress, her love is very sorely tried. No disclosures, but I started to feel the depth of her connection with James, and normally I hate any kind of sentimentality - oh we were so deeeeply in love, but Drabble neatly steers us through any mushy grounds with yes her cold analytical, clinical style, but it occurred to me that Jane's behaviour besotted and unreasonable and mad in many parts was actually genuine. She cares so little for her own comfort; she conceals incidents that are painful to herself; she despairs of ever finding a way to keep her love and yet she accepts all.
We are given hardly anything from James's perspective, just the odd bit of conversation, the odd description of his kindness and devotion to her, so it's hard to assess it if really, truly is love, from both sides.
However at the point where she confesses: "it would have been easier and neater if he had died"; this confession seems such an exposure that we start to see the strength of Jane Gray.
To conclude - a harsh format for love, but then a deliberate choice by the writer, with the aim I suppose of looking at affairs of the heart in a new light - a 20th century female perspective of falling in love.
By the end, I liked it - because of the stripping of mush - because of the unadulterated look at the bleakness of romantic love. It takes a writer who is not focussed on her sales digits to write in this manner. Drabble was only 29 when she wrote "The Waterfall", but there is nothing immature; there is no sense of experimentation, finding her voice, etc. Here is a writer in all of her power right from the start of her career.
January 25, 2013
This is novel of hers that I've re-read the most, but I have to say, I love pretty much all of Margaret Drabble's early books. Style-wise, she's a very pragmatic writer, so you wouldn't be reading it for the language so much as the way she psychologically vivisects her characters: with great humanity and a voracious moral curiosity. She seemed to run out of steam in the early 80s, but her 70s novels ("The Needle's Eye" is another great one) have aged well, at least for me.
December 31, 2022
My mother said she was reading this novel when her second husband had his fatal road accident. She resumed and finished it some time after his passing.
It is as if she is herself a character who has strayed from the pages of this novel.
The many posthumous fans of Clarice Lispector might find Drabble, at least in this novel, a kind of parallel voice.
Some of this actually has dated - the Freudian musings, the reliance on that stilted word, 'darling'. The rest of it is as modern as Fleabag or Mrs Dalloway. One of those things is older than this novel and the other is newer.
It is as if she is herself a character who has strayed from the pages of this novel.
The many posthumous fans of Clarice Lispector might find Drabble, at least in this novel, a kind of parallel voice.
Some of this actually has dated - the Freudian musings, the reliance on that stilted word, 'darling'. The rest of it is as modern as Fleabag or Mrs Dalloway. One of those things is older than this novel and the other is newer.
May 10, 2012
I found Margaret Drabble in my 20s and was a staple in my life at that time. She and Doris Lessing filled my bookshelves in graduate school.
May 8, 2024
This was Drabble’s fourth novel; I’ve read the previous three and preferred two of them to this (A Summer Bird-Cage is fab). The setup is similar to The Garrick Year, which I read last year for book club, in that the focus is on a young mother of two who embarks on an affair. When we meet Jane Gray she is awaiting the birth of her second child. Her husband, Malcolm, walked out a few weeks ago, but she has the midwife and her cousin Lucy to rely on. Lucy and her husband, James, trade off staying over with Jane as she recovers from childbirth. James is particularly solicitous and, one night, joins Jane in bed.
At this point there is a stark shift from third person to first person as Jane confesses that she’s been glossing over the complexities of the situation; sleeping with one’s cousin’s husband is never going to be without emotional fallout. “It won’t, of course, do: as an account, I mean, of what took place”; “Lies, lies, it’s all lies. A pack of lies.” The novel continues to alternate between first and third person as Jane gives us glimpses into her uneasy family-making. I found myself bored through much of it, only perking back up for the meta stuff and the one climactic event. In a way it’s a classic tale of free will versus fate, including the choice of how to frame what happens.
(What intriguing punctuation there!) The fast driving and obsession with cars is . Like many an adultery story, both novels ask whether an affair changes everything, or nothing. Infidelity and the parenting of young children together don’t amount to the most scintillating material, but it is appealing to see Drabble experimenting with how to tell a story.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
At this point there is a stark shift from third person to first person as Jane confesses that she’s been glossing over the complexities of the situation; sleeping with one’s cousin’s husband is never going to be without emotional fallout. “It won’t, of course, do: as an account, I mean, of what took place”; “Lies, lies, it’s all lies. A pack of lies.” The novel continues to alternate between first and third person as Jane gives us glimpses into her uneasy family-making. I found myself bored through much of it, only perking back up for the meta stuff and the one climactic event. In a way it’s a classic tale of free will versus fate, including the choice of how to frame what happens.
I am no longer capable of inaction – then I will invent a morality that condones me.
It wasn’t so, it wasn’t so. I am getting tired of all this Freudian family nexus, I want to get back to that schizoid third-person dialogue.
The narrative tale. The narrative explanation. That was it, or some of it. I loved James because he was what I had never had: because he drove too fast: because he belonged to my cousin: because he was kind to his own child
(What intriguing punctuation there!) The fast driving and obsession with cars is . Like many an adultery story, both novels ask whether an affair changes everything, or nothing. Infidelity and the parenting of young children together don’t amount to the most scintillating material, but it is appealing to see Drabble experimenting with how to tell a story.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
January 14, 2010
Margaret Drabble's prose is like a slightly haunting dream--not overly intrusive but a bit menacing. Her main character, Jane Gray (whose name alludes to the historical figure, no doubt), offers a compelling perspective from which to analyze the condition of feminine passivity when confronted with romantic desire. The question of whether romantic love is a construction of our culture or a biological imperative is raised by Drabble's many references to literature and music and the romantic tropes they propagate.
June 30, 2018
I was actually slightly engaged by this Drabble, which is still by no means a recommendation. The antiheroine is so aggressively depressed and protective of that immersed gloom and negativity that I felt rather like applauding her. It's a stance you have to tough out and justify with chin thrust out, in a world trying to drag you into a perpetual love-in. That said, still not a great book and a limp rag of an ending.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 7, 2017
The Waterfall is wonderfully written. Drabble's language is captivating and you are encapsulated in the small and oppressive world of the main character, Jane. Opressive might not be quite the right word: the main character's world is definitely claustrophobic, but described in such a way that the reader oscillates between feeling completely closed in, taking over the anxieties of the main character, or completely detached, taking over the disengaged way in which Jane describes her passion.
I found the first part of the book especially fascinating. It was boring by conventional standards: there are few events, and they are not described as such. However, you can feel Jane's emotions, you can become her, you can feel her anguish. I felt that was less the case in the second part of the book: events abound, as does anguish, but suddenly you read to find out what happens further, and not to understand Jane. The tension of the last part of the book is definitely palpable, but Jane herself is less so. She becomes more earthy, and by doing that, she is not anymore the embodiment of our own neuroses, as she is in the first part of the book. Her neuroses in the second part come from material sources, and that weakens the power of her ghostly suffering in the first part of the book.
I found the first part of the book especially fascinating. It was boring by conventional standards: there are few events, and they are not described as such. However, you can feel Jane's emotions, you can become her, you can feel her anguish. I felt that was less the case in the second part of the book: events abound, as does anguish, but suddenly you read to find out what happens further, and not to understand Jane. The tension of the last part of the book is definitely palpable, but Jane herself is less so. She becomes more earthy, and by doing that, she is not anymore the embodiment of our own neuroses, as she is in the first part of the book. Her neuroses in the second part come from material sources, and that weakens the power of her ghostly suffering in the first part of the book.
September 18, 2009
Have I said enough times how much I like Margaret Drabble? I believe this marks 17 of her 18 published novels I have read. This particular one was referenced in last week's NY Times Magazine article about her http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/mag... - referring "...to her famously vexed relationship with her older sister, the novelist A. S. Byatt ('The only book of mine that she said she liked was The Waterfall — it could’ve been because it was more experimental')."...experimental mostly in that it toys with the unreliable narrator and shifts her narration from 1st to 3rd person a few times. I personally vastly prefer Drabble to Byatt, though the article tells us elder sister has surpassed younger in the public eye in recent years.
December 15, 2020
Reading this book while listening to both of Taylor Swift's new albums was a rollercoaster ride that left me gasping for air (see: illicit affairs, ivy). There is magic in the way Margaret Drabble can grab your hand and lead you through the ins and outs of her characters' minds, seeing the world through their eyes and then seeing them through the world's eyes, everything feeling like it doesn't quite make sense but somehow still falling perfectly into place by the end of the paragraph.
I've seen other reviews mention Jane is not a well-liked protagonist, and though I can see why, I can't find it in me to not completely empathize. At the end of the day, this is another story about a woman victim of her time, of her circumstances, of social pressure and the way things are expected to happen to her and if they don't — if she doesn't find true love before a certain age, if she doesn't have kids before a certain age, if she doesn't quit her job and find her passion in motherhood, there is such a long list of things that she has to achieve and none of them are what she wants. In a way, I'm reminded of The Edible Bride, where the main character is dragged through a similar route. Both of them start out as young women in a society that promises they can go to university and get a job and find their own passions, but before they have time to start even looking, they realize none of it was real, and the world still expects them to pretend that brief glimpse at an independent life was enough, but now it's time for settling down like any decent woman would do.
The affair is raw, brutal, the descriptions that would've sounded cheesy anywhere else sound real in a narrative built on desperation. I couldn't put it down for the first three quarters, and then I had to slow down, really pay attention to what was happening, take breaks to let it all sink in because it moved too fast and I realized quickly if I binged it I would miss out on so many details that are buried in the way she writes, the way she changes points of view. Subtleties are a strong point, and this is a book that demands to be read carefully, with patience and attention.
I've seen other reviews mention Jane is not a well-liked protagonist, and though I can see why, I can't find it in me to not completely empathize. At the end of the day, this is another story about a woman victim of her time, of her circumstances, of social pressure and the way things are expected to happen to her and if they don't — if she doesn't find true love before a certain age, if she doesn't have kids before a certain age, if she doesn't quit her job and find her passion in motherhood, there is such a long list of things that she has to achieve and none of them are what she wants. In a way, I'm reminded of The Edible Bride, where the main character is dragged through a similar route. Both of them start out as young women in a society that promises they can go to university and get a job and find their own passions, but before they have time to start even looking, they realize none of it was real, and the world still expects them to pretend that brief glimpse at an independent life was enough, but now it's time for settling down like any decent woman would do.
The affair is raw, brutal, the descriptions that would've sounded cheesy anywhere else sound real in a narrative built on desperation. I couldn't put it down for the first three quarters, and then I had to slow down, really pay attention to what was happening, take breaks to let it all sink in because it moved too fast and I realized quickly if I binged it I would miss out on so many details that are buried in the way she writes, the way she changes points of view. Subtleties are a strong point, and this is a book that demands to be read carefully, with patience and attention.
September 20, 2015
I always want to like Margaret Drabble more than I actually do. Her sentences are beautifully descriptive and her narrative is well crafted. But I find her characters tedious, self absorbed, and boring - just as she means them to be. So in that sense, she is wholly successful. But I just don't care for reading about the people she invents. This is one of the few Drabble books I was actually able to finish. I usually stop after the first hundred pages because I just can't stand keeping company with her characters. But this book was mercifully short, and with enough of a plot to keep me curious as to how it would end, and the ending was suitably boring.
June 15, 2017
If you have ever felt absolutely enervated, or been obsessively in love, or betrayed a friend, this is the book for you. If you have ever lain in bed for days, kept yourself from knowing unhappy truths about the person you loved, or feared that your ugliest traits would cripple your children in turn, this is the book for you. Margaret Drabble does it all with prose that is so graceful that I reread the first chapter several times for the sheer pleasure of the language. The fifth star is gone because the self-reflectiveness of Jane Gray seemed to me so excessive that sometimes I skipped it. But oh, what a waterfall.
March 3, 2015
Whilst I greatly admired Drabble's style, I'm afraid I found the actual subject matter of this novel rather banal. Adultery? Is that all? Not very interesting. I found it extremely difficult to understand or relate to the the narrator. What a whiner. I wonder if she seemed more interesting when the book was written in the late 1960s? If so, the story hasn't stood the test of time. I will definitely read more of Drabble's work because I think she writes extremely well and I hope she has put her talents to better use in other novels.
August 28, 2017
The book promises sex/scandal - and seemed intriguing to me at the time of discovery and purchase. But this thing is DRY. And long. And with barely any respite in monotony since there's no traditional chapters and hardly any page breaks, Just run-on paragraphs that last for pages at a time. What a horrendous little book. Pathetic, predictable characters as flat as the page they're printed on... The Worst.
April 25, 2015
I read this more than 30 years ago. It contains the best description of how a woman experiences those early days at home with a newborn child. That's what really stuck with me. I now want to re-read it. Margaret Drabble has always spoken to me through her books. I'm a bit younger than she but her early novels mirror my own life experience in an uncanny way.
Read
May 27, 2018In retrospect, I don't know whether I should go on disliking this book like I did back when I read it, for having a supremely ineffectual, soulless protagonist, or whether I should conclude it's most likely a portrait of clinical depression and anxiety disorder and be more understanding.
I certainly don't buy the idea that the romantic affair central to the plot was anything but pointless.
I certainly don't buy the idea that the romantic affair central to the plot was anything but pointless.
March 3, 2024
2.5 stars. The prose in this book was beautiful, it is very well written. The tone of this books gives strong melancholy feelings of isolation. The main character, Jane, is probably the worst main character I have ever read in a book. She is self absorbed, and so negative and horrible, she is beyond help. I disliked her from the beginning and forcing myself through the book, listening to her overthink about stupid shit and stupid men, was so frustrating. Jane has the most passive non-existent personality I have ever seen. I know she was purposely written in a disagreeable way, that this was Drabble’s intention, and it certainly worked. She really wrote the most disagreeable character ever. The ending was not satisfying in anyway, nothing had really changed except Jane finally finding humor in her life, and admitting that she doesn’t do shit. But she just continues to not do shit. I really should have stopped reading this book when I realized I didn’t like it 50 pages in, but I forced myself to keep going because I wanted to see Jane pull herself out of the shithole that is her life. Spoiler alert: she doesn’t. James and Malcom had no personalities either outside of their hobbies, Lucy was the only character with personality. I’m glad she told Jane she wished she died😍. Jane needed to hear that.
March 1, 2022
I first read Margaret Drabble in my late teens, on my mum’s recommendation, and I adored her. I especially loved the way her characters analysed and fretted about the tiniest of actions: just the need to conduct a transaction in a shop could have them in a tizz for days.
Apparently, my preferences have changed. The main character in The Waterfall, Jane, is a classic Drabble character. Literary, thoughtful, an Oxford graduate, semi-detached from the world and utterly useless on any practical level. I’d have loved her when I was seventeen, but I am afraid that now, I simply found her infuriating. The story revolves around her rather inadvertent affair with her cousin’s husband James. They spend pages and pages sitting in her house, telling each other how much they love one another. Very little else happens until quite near the end of the book, when some plot does actually occur, but it’s a bit too little too late.
I am sad not to love this, but unfortunately I don’t.
Apparently, my preferences have changed. The main character in The Waterfall, Jane, is a classic Drabble character. Literary, thoughtful, an Oxford graduate, semi-detached from the world and utterly useless on any practical level. I’d have loved her when I was seventeen, but I am afraid that now, I simply found her infuriating. The story revolves around her rather inadvertent affair with her cousin’s husband James. They spend pages and pages sitting in her house, telling each other how much they love one another. Very little else happens until quite near the end of the book, when some plot does actually occur, but it’s a bit too little too late.
I am sad not to love this, but unfortunately I don’t.
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February 24, 2025Apparently the only book of Drabble’s that A.S. Byatt — her older sister — said she liked. Drabble figured it was because it was “experimental.” There is a lot of the narrator, Jane, arguing with herself about how to tell a story, switching points of view, debating the Value of Truth, etc., none of which was that compelling to me.
The first section, before that break, is all told in the third person, and it’s astonishing. My second Drabble after The Garrick Year which is lighter without being at all stupid and which I preferred. She was so prolific starting at such a young age. I am transfixed by the sisterly literary rivalry even though I think the comparison trivializes both writers, makes their art into a mere statement of its author’s MO. But what an interesting kind of competition in how women can be happy.
The first section, before that break, is all told in the third person, and it’s astonishing. My second Drabble after The Garrick Year which is lighter without being at all stupid and which I preferred. She was so prolific starting at such a young age. I am transfixed by the sisterly literary rivalry even though I think the comparison trivializes both writers, makes their art into a mere statement of its author’s MO. But what an interesting kind of competition in how women can be happy.
July 10, 2022
The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble - not my taste
The next in my quest to read Margaret Drabble and while I can still appreciate the author's abilities, this really was not for me. Didn't like the story, didn't like the characters, really didn't like the way the writing flipped between Jane Gray speaking in the first person to talking about herself in the third person. I just didn't get it. Why do that? What significance is there in saying, for example, "I did this" one moment and then saying "she did this" in the next paragraph. It infuriated me.
Anyway Jane Gray separated from her husband while expecting her second child. The book starts with her cousin and cousin's husband supporting her through its birth. This being the 1960s she's laid up in bed for some time and the couple take it in turns to stay with her overnight....which soon translates to the husband, James, sharing her bed - initially platonically but that doesn't last.
The story flips back and forth between looking back at her childhood, meeting her husband, Malcolm, and why their marriage was a failure, and her affair with James and how it transforms her life.
Personally I would have washed my hands off the lot of them. Such annoying, self centred people. I guess that it provoked strong emotion in me is testament for the writing, but I just hated the story. Hope the next one is more to my preferences but might give myself a month or so before I return.
#review
The next in my quest to read Margaret Drabble and while I can still appreciate the author's abilities, this really was not for me. Didn't like the story, didn't like the characters, really didn't like the way the writing flipped between Jane Gray speaking in the first person to talking about herself in the third person. I just didn't get it. Why do that? What significance is there in saying, for example, "I did this" one moment and then saying "she did this" in the next paragraph. It infuriated me.
Anyway Jane Gray separated from her husband while expecting her second child. The book starts with her cousin and cousin's husband supporting her through its birth. This being the 1960s she's laid up in bed for some time and the couple take it in turns to stay with her overnight....which soon translates to the husband, James, sharing her bed - initially platonically but that doesn't last.
The story flips back and forth between looking back at her childhood, meeting her husband, Malcolm, and why their marriage was a failure, and her affair with James and how it transforms her life.
Personally I would have washed my hands off the lot of them. Such annoying, self centred people. I guess that it provoked strong emotion in me is testament for the writing, but I just hated the story. Hope the next one is more to my preferences but might give myself a month or so before I return.
#review
February 28, 2021
I love Drabble heroines - their quiet passions & literary references & how they never get their hair cut at salons.
December 25, 2014
"The Waterfall" by Margaret Drabble is a difficult, humorless and brilliant book, an unrelenting study in self-discovery. The single voice in "The Waterfall" belongs to Jane Gray, a fiercely intelligent young woman who deliberately holds her coldness, her love affair and her sexuality up to the same strong light in a narrative without protective shades or romantic heights. The author's style, consistent with Jane's painful omniscience, is persistently cool and elegant: holding fast to the task at hand, she will not for a moment allow the gentle ironies of her more amiable novels. Essentially, "The Waterfall" is the story of a love affair, but in the telling Jane discovers that all the bits and pieces of personal history that she would like to avoid are necessary for an honest account. Her passion for a handsome car-racing enthusiast has an unreal quality throughout and becomes merely the occasion for her own endless self-absorption. As a novel "The Waterfall" is intellectually heavy. The story of Jane Gray, despite her articulateness, seems to lack resonance.
January 18, 2021
This is a brilliant novel that engages with a myriad of themes such as marriage, love, womanhood, and motherhood, to name a few. After her husband deserts her while Jane is on the verge of giving birth to her second child, Jane Gray takes up an adulterous relationship with her cousin’s husband. The novel is about Jane’s newly-found love and the moral issues and questions it raises.
December 1, 2009
Crazy in love! The author wrote beautifully of the rational and irrational thought processes and feelings of the protagonist as she had her affair. Very internally focused without much plot, but I kept wanting to see where her mind would go next.
June 18, 2011
A book about awakening sexuality and human emotions ...and yet set in a drab (is that the word that comes to mind because of the author's name) and dreary world.
September 2, 2024
The Waterfall, published in 1969, is the fifth of Margaret Drabble’s iconic 1960’s novels, all written before the author’s 30th birthday. This is the fraught story of Jane Grey, a young mother, a poet who neglects her art, the unhappy wife of Malcolm, an accomplished classical guitarist and singer of madrigals whose career is just at the point of taking off. As the novel begins, Jane is about to give birth to their second child (their first, Laurie, is a toddler). But she is alone, having watched Malcolm walk out the door some weeks earlier following a violent episode that capped off five or so years of loveless marriage. Through labour and birth, Jane is attended by her cousin Lucy and Lucy’s husband James, whose uncomplaining willingness to perform intimate and awkward duties strikes Jane as perhaps somewhat unusual. But it’s not too long after the birth that James is spending more time at Jane’s house than his own and the two are declaring their love for each other. James is a risk-taker and easily bored, a racing-car enthusiast, owner of a garage that services high-end vehicles, but he doesn’t do the work himself, so his time is his own to spend however he pleases. Soon, with Malcolm out of the picture, James has stepped into the role of surrogate husband, changing nappies and taking Jane and the children on country drives, letting people who don’t know any better assume they’re a family. Of course, the idyll cannot last, and with sudden exposure comes intense emotional and physical distress, and even questions of survival. For most of the novel Jane—possessing a sophisticated intelligence but emotionally reticent, to some extent agoraphobic, and passively tolerant of whatever comes her way—is more than willing to accept James’s attentions for as long as he’s willing to bestow them. Drabble’s novel is remarkable, more for the manner of the telling than for the story itself, which in summary risks sounding pedestrian. The narrative begins in the third-person, but soon switches to the first-person as Jane intrudes into the story in order to set the record straight, describing her own upbringing (privileged with snobbish, emotionally withholding parents) along with some of the backstory of Malcolm, Lucy and James, and admitting that the affair with James is simply the culmination of a long-standing but unacknowledged attraction of which they’d both been aware but—perhaps for decorum’s sake, maybe simply out of caution or fear—resisted acting upon. The shifts in perspective are performed with seamless elegance, and at each point Drabble’s narrative takes us deeper into Jane’s damaged psyche, where we see that she is guilt-ridden, tormented by self-doubt and feelings that she’s undeserving of happiness, but unable to end the affair once it’s underway because of a desperate lack of assertiveness and an almost neurotic inability to impose her wants and needs on other people (one of the reasons why her marriage failed so miserably). From time to time, Jane questions why she does the things she does and expresses doubts regarding what she wants from life, but at the same time she seems to feel that her own wishes (as opposed to the wishes of others) are unimportant. The Waterfall achieves classic status because of its mesmerizing prose and the psychological depth of its portrayal of a young woman who lacks faith in her own identity. Criticized at the time of publication for being humorless, claustrophobic and narrowly concerned with mundanities, reading it now in light of Margaret Drabble’s eventual career path, The Waterfall, a fully mature work of great psychological depth, appears to have extended her art in extraordinary fashion and, one could reasonably argue, provided a stepping stone toward later literary triumphs.
May 22, 2025
Jane Gray wird von ihrem Mann kurz vor der Geburt ihres zweiten Kinds verlassen. Ihr Leben liegt in Trümmern und sie fühlt sich wie eine leere Hülle. Das ändert sich, als sie eine Affäre mit dem Mann ihrer Cousine Lucy, ihrer besten Freundin beginnt.
Jane ist zuhause und wartet auf die Geburt ihres zweiten Kinds. Aber eigentlich kann man von einem Zuhause nicht sprechen. Das Haus in dem sie wohnt, ist genau das: ein Haus, in dem sie wohnt. Sie hat keine Beziehung dazu, wie sie zu nichts anderem eine Beziehung hat. Dass ihr Mann sie verlassen hat, berührt sie nicht. Von ihrem ersten Kind redet sie nur als "das Kind" und lange Zeit war ich mir nicht sicher, ob das Kind überhaupt lebt. Warum sie ihren Mann geheiratet hat, weiß ich nicht. Das Wort "Liebe" kommt in ihrem Wortschatz nicht vor.
Ich habe den Eindruck gewonnen, dass sie ihre Cousine imitiert. Lucy hat ein schönes Haus, hat Mann und Kinder. So etwas möchte Jane auch. Mehr noch: sie möchte genau das. Sie will diesen Mann. Das wird ihr allerdings in dem Moment klar, als er sein Interesse an ihr zeigt.
Für mich ist Jane eine weiße Leinwand, die darauf wartet beschrieben zu werden. Sie ist passiv und macht immer nur den zweiten Schritt. Darüber ist sie sich im Klaren, aber es interessiert sie nicht. Es ist nicht klar, ob sie immer so war oder ob es ein bestimmtes Ereignis war, dass diesen Zustand ausgelöst hat. Offensichtlich interessiert es ihr Umfeld aber nicht, wie sie sich fühlt (wenn es überhaupt bemerkt was mit Jane los ist). Wäre sie alleine geblieben, wäre sie sicherlich glücklicher geworden als sie jetzt ist.
Ich fand die Geschichte schwierig zu lesen, weil sie mit großem Abstand zur Protagonisten erzählt wurde. Trotzdem hat sie mich sehr beeindruckt.
Jane ist zuhause und wartet auf die Geburt ihres zweiten Kinds. Aber eigentlich kann man von einem Zuhause nicht sprechen. Das Haus in dem sie wohnt, ist genau das: ein Haus, in dem sie wohnt. Sie hat keine Beziehung dazu, wie sie zu nichts anderem eine Beziehung hat. Dass ihr Mann sie verlassen hat, berührt sie nicht. Von ihrem ersten Kind redet sie nur als "das Kind" und lange Zeit war ich mir nicht sicher, ob das Kind überhaupt lebt. Warum sie ihren Mann geheiratet hat, weiß ich nicht. Das Wort "Liebe" kommt in ihrem Wortschatz nicht vor.
Ich habe den Eindruck gewonnen, dass sie ihre Cousine imitiert. Lucy hat ein schönes Haus, hat Mann und Kinder. So etwas möchte Jane auch. Mehr noch: sie möchte genau das. Sie will diesen Mann. Das wird ihr allerdings in dem Moment klar, als er sein Interesse an ihr zeigt.
Für mich ist Jane eine weiße Leinwand, die darauf wartet beschrieben zu werden. Sie ist passiv und macht immer nur den zweiten Schritt. Darüber ist sie sich im Klaren, aber es interessiert sie nicht. Es ist nicht klar, ob sie immer so war oder ob es ein bestimmtes Ereignis war, dass diesen Zustand ausgelöst hat. Offensichtlich interessiert es ihr Umfeld aber nicht, wie sie sich fühlt (wenn es überhaupt bemerkt was mit Jane los ist). Wäre sie alleine geblieben, wäre sie sicherlich glücklicher geworden als sie jetzt ist.
Ich fand die Geschichte schwierig zu lesen, weil sie mit großem Abstand zur Protagonisten erzählt wurde. Trotzdem hat sie mich sehr beeindruckt.
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November 9, 2022I've put this down as being contemporary, but I could just as easily have used the label "recent past". It was apparently written in 1969, but the actual date of the events is fairly irrelevant.
I don't know how this book ended up on my shelf, but I was distantly familiar with the author's name and was curious to check her out.
Hmm. Not particularly my cup of tea.
I note I am not particularly prone to depression (and yes, I am extremely fortunate in that). Perhaps if I were, I would be able to relate more or understand better the narrative. As is, most of it seemed quite alien to me, and I was not inclined to spend much energy on deciphering why and when the POV shifted from first to third person.
In some ways Lucy struck me as the most relatable character, which is not saying much.
As I am quite stubborn at times, I did read through to the end, and even was intrigued by the waterfalls in the story, trying to decide what sort of symbolism the card trick or the final outing were meant to have. If any.
I am pretty open-minded, I think, so if I came across another book by Drabble I would give it a go, but I must say, based on this one, I wouldn't go out of my way.
I don't know how this book ended up on my shelf, but I was distantly familiar with the author's name and was curious to check her out.
Hmm. Not particularly my cup of tea.
I note I am not particularly prone to depression (and yes, I am extremely fortunate in that). Perhaps if I were, I would be able to relate more or understand better the narrative. As is, most of it seemed quite alien to me, and I was not inclined to spend much energy on deciphering why and when the POV shifted from first to third person.
In some ways Lucy struck me as the most relatable character, which is not saying much.
As I am quite stubborn at times, I did read through to the end, and even was intrigued by the waterfalls in the story, trying to decide what sort of symbolism the card trick or the final outing were meant to have. If any.
I am pretty open-minded, I think, so if I came across another book by Drabble I would give it a go, but I must say, based on this one, I wouldn't go out of my way.
July 25, 2019
Drabble's writing is phenomenal. It represents detailed description without being overly intellectual. The narrative is too long, and too anti-climatic for it to be a masterpiece, but I will read other books from this author. The female protagonist was well represented without being unlikeable despite her choices, and her honesty was refreshing. She's unreliable, but guilty about it. When she speaks directly to you, as a reader, it adds that little bit of purpose to the book. Rather than her spitting out her story, she's sending a message to her audience to not make the same mistakes she did, and to explain why she did what she did.
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