Penguin Books Australia

With an Introduction by José Francisco Fernández

'Drabble writes so penetratingly about the female condition that it is impossible not to laugh, wince and admire' Amanda Craig, New Statesman

Margaret Drabble is one of the major literary figures of her generation. In this collection of her complete short fiction from across four decades, she examines the intense private worlds and passions...

With an Introduction by
Lisa Allardice

'Drabble excels at describing the minute detail of human behaviour'
Independent

'An extraordinary work: it tells a story deftly, beautifully'
Joyce Carol Oates

'Elegiac, offbeat and moving'
Mail on Sunday

The novelist, critic and biographer, Margaret Drabble is one of the major literary figures of her generation. This collection reveals her brilliance in the art of the short story, presenting her complete short fiction for the first time in a single volume.

One of the most acclaimed novelists of her generation, Margaret Drabble is an unmatched observer of postwar English lives, portraying social change, sexual liberation, landscape, class and the messy complications of human relationships with intricacy and honesty. In these two stories of lives colliding, a mother buying a birthday gift has her dreams destroyed, and a honeymoon leads to an unexpected...

Humphrey and Ailsa meet as children by a grey, northern sea. Humphrey is quite, serious – and will in time explore the sea's mysteries; Ailsa is angry, a freckled cobra ready to strike. Yet they fascinate one another and when the meet again years later they fall briefly – and disastrously – in love.

Half a lifetime passes before Humphrey and Ailsa's paths finally re-cross. What will...

Gathering together six travelling companions – women friends...