Margaret Drabble8217;s novels have illuminated the past fifty years, especially the changing lives of women, like no others. Yet her short fiction has its own unique brilliance. Her penetrating evocations of character and place, her wide-ranging curiosity, her sense of irony8212;all are on display here, in fifteen stories that explore marriage, female friendships, the English tourist abroad, love affairs with houses, peace demonstrations, gin and tonics, cultural TV programs; in stories that are perceptive, sharp, and funny. An introduction by the Spanish academic Jos233; Fern225;ndez places the stories in the context of her life and her novels. This collection is a wonderful encapsulation of a masterly career.
Collecting the short fiction of British author Margaret Drabble, A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SMILING WOMAN expresses a variety of corners of English life in the postwar era. Chronicling situations involving her countrymen both at home and throughout Europe, Drabble zooms in on how personal details fit within the climate of a nation that seems to be shrinking relative to a widening world. Straddling radicalism of the 1960s and Thatcherism in the 1980s, the 13 stories often present women awakening to new phases, whether gaining confident breath while on holiday with a new husband or learning to gasp delicately in old age.
- Genre: Fiction + Literature Themes, Fiction + Literature Genres
- Subgenre: Literary Genres + Types of Novels, Literary
- Publisher: Mariner Books
- Pages: 227
- Edition: Reprint
- Language: English
- Format: paperback
- Release Date: March 27, 2012
- Date Published: March 27, 2012
- Author: Margaret Drabble