'I have learned so much from Margaret Drabble's work. Her prose is very beautiful, very funny, and at the same time very serious. Novels like The Millstone and Jerusalem the Golden have helped me to understand what great writing can be' - SALLY ROONEY 'Deserves to be . widely read . The traditional narrative mechanics of fate and free will, character and chance, are the driving forces of Drabble's fiction' - Guardian 'An unapologetically frank novel about the female experience' - Guardian 'Praise for Margaret Drabble: Margaret Drabble's early novels were intimate and sprightly chronicles of the small dissatisfactions and small triumphs of young women like herself' - HILARY MANTEL 'One of the most versatile and accomplished authors of her generation' - New Yorker 'One of our foremost women writers' - Guardian.