The Radiant Way

by Margaret Drabble

Book Overview

"Ambitious and artful...Drabble reminds us why we still love to read." NEWSWEEK Liz, Alix and Ester have been part of one another's lives since their Cambridge days twenty-five years ago. Liz is a successful psychotherapist, Alix is a wife and mother, still pursuing politics, and Esther is an academic. As we follow them through the next five years we see their world changing around them, and we see each woman confronted with difficult, often painful,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394561430
• ISBN13: 9780394561431
• Release Date: October 1987
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 407 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Life, a documentary.

This was my second Margaret Drabble, and I liked it even more than the other one [Millstone], I would have thought this a difficult feat, just a week ago. But here it is, this is a great book. The story line is so simple it is ridiculously difficult to define. Drabble just shows us the lives of three friends who meet regularly and grow into maturity, together--in their separate ways. When we meet them it is the end of the 1970s decade. They had been friends for 25 years and know each other well. When we leave them, five years later, just like life itself, nothing is clearly resolved in their lives, they have gained some self knowledge, but not much, they have gone on living. No dramatic gestures or operatic drama. Each has made changes and moved on to new realities, never however betraying her own integrity. Liz Headland, a psychoterapist, through events she cannot control, eventually comes to understand more about about human relations than her training could have done. Alix Bowen, naive and politically engaged, wearer of her social conscience and responsibility on her sleeve, wises up when she realizes the dead-endedness of fighting alone for a better and just world, when the forces of the establishment have no interest in change. And Esther Breuer, a romantic spirit, an academic and a WWII refugee, a woman who always felt herself an outsider, realizes that she built a belljar around herself through the studying of art, to the point of distancing herself from the men who engage her. In the background is life of the early 1980s in England. Riots, labor problems, murders, class stigmatization, and all the other nuances of England under Thatcher. The book is very funny, very biting and understated. It is open ended, just as life is. And we all feel sorry that we will not follow these friends for another 10 years, but we are reassured of their wellness, and their ability to handle the future. This book is a jewel and a great portrait of a time and a generation. FIVE STARS!!!

Radiant Indeed

In her own inimitable SHIMMERING style, Margaret Drabble's Radiant Way, is radiant indeed. The novel opens with a grand New Year's party, and Drabble is one of the best at rendering the ebb and flow, highs and lows, of a party. You will not get bogged down in a confusion of characters because this author knows how to deftly create individuals swirling within group chaos. Social groups, whether they be society at large or a few close friends, are Drabble's forte. The reader is immersed in the ever-changing world of three women who share a life-long friendship. Join them as they make their way down the path of the radiant way.