The Radiant Way

The Radiant Way #1

by Margaret Drabble

Twenty five years ago Liz, Alix and Esther were leading lights at Cambridge. Now they meet as old friends at a glittering New Year's Eve party to welcome in the 1980s. It is the dawn of the Thatcher era, and Britain is on the brink of great social and political upheaval. How will these three ambitious and confident middle-aged women survive the personal and professional challenges, and the changing values of the next decade? The Radiant Way brilliantly explores their loves, losses, hopes and fears, and the strength of their friendship.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, British Literature, Contemporary, 20th Century, Historical Fiction, Womens

396 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Dame 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.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read about a quarter of this and got stuck - hard work! The set up of 3 friends negotiating the pitfalls of 80s England - is just, well - passé.

Ok - so I've now read the total of 376 pages - and the above response - which I wrote back in January of this year still stands. I think I gave 3 stars, and I'm wondering if I can edge it up to 4 stars. I liked large parts of this novel and then there are huge segments I would have just cut - if I'd been the editor. I was bored stiff with the whole plot line reference Brian Bowen - he's not a major character but he is married to Alix Bowen who is. I would also have cut a lot of Charles Headleand's story, including all and any references to his three sons. To be perfectly honest none of the male parts were particularly interesting - ah except Claudio Volpone - the man Esther loves, only she finds out that it's an entirely solipsistic relationship. She withdraws her warmth and watches Claudio - without as she says "giving herself" and to her sorrow discovers that he doesn't notice any difference.

I think I could accurately say that I did enjoy most of the sections revolving around the three women - the central characters - Liz Headleand, Alix Bowen and Esther Breuer. They first meet in 1952, when they go for their Cambridge interview and are reunited a year later in Octocter '53 when they begin their degree courses. The novel begins, however, some 26 years later, with a New Year's Eve party on the last day of 1979. It progresses through the next four years, the notable 1984, and on into the summer of '85 where we last see the ladies enjoying a picnic together.

At the beginning, when they are only 18, Drabble uses the famous quote from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie they are "the crème de la crème" of their generation. Liz, Alix and Esther who come from different backgrounds represent the most intelligent young women, of their time; and of course it is interesting to see that none of them reach - what might be defined as the pinnacles of influence - positions whereby they are able to change or exert direction on the political, social, or economic spheres. Esther and Alix spend their entire careers doing piecemeal work, and both at various points are upbraided for wasting their brains, for not being more ambitious or influential. The men of course who surround them generally do have pivotal or pivoting positions.

Liz is different, she qualifies and trains as a psychiatrist and choses a deliberate balance between her private practice, and patients referred from the public sphere - the NHS. The book opens from within her attractive, expensive Harley Street house, which of course she has acquired only through her marriage to Charles. The same evening Charles announces he is leaving her for Lady Henrietta Lattchet, whom he has surmised will be more supportive of him in his future career.

So, to summarise - their brains together with their status degrees from Cambridge do not provide the three ladies with top-level positions, or even financially stable situations; Esther and Alix just manage to scrape by in terms of financial independence.

Another aspect that I found interesting - was the emphasis on intellect and rationale. Drabble is constantly juxtaposing the confidence and absolute belief in intelligence and logic by which all three women live their lives with some strange partnerings. The most obvious is Alix's connection with Jilly Fox, whom she meets through her work in a women's prison where she teaches - literature. It's a progressive institution, which naturally receives radical cuts in the non-socialist clime of the Tories, 1980s. When Jilly is released, she begs Alix to maintain contact with her, which Alix staunchly rejects on the firm ground that it would be unprofessional as well as unsafe. There is a remarkable scene where Alix finally agrees to meet Jilly in her home, which is a squat not far from the Harrow Road, where notorious murders have been taking place.

Jilly states that Alix is mad, but that she has always liked her and forgives her. Alix's response is that of the assured academic, of the assured middle-class well dispositioned woman with a sophisticated education, she suggests that Jilly needs help and will try to get her some further counselling, perhaps even through her friend Liz. I was struck by this as Alix is so completely enmeshed within her own beliefs. She is completely unable to respond with either compassion or kindness to a young woman, whom she has known for several years, whom she knows is not mentally defective and yet she rejects her - and leaves her in the derelict house, without electricity or furniture without anything.

This same pattern is repeated with the other intellectuals - both Liz and Esther have their own nemeses. Esther's as already mentioned is in the form of Claudio Volpone - she even discusses Claudio's monomania, calling upon Liz's professional opinion - in a very delicate and slanted conversation. And again later when Esther recounts Claudio's lecture in Rome wherein he discloses that he has met a werewolf and witches in some deep pocket of Eastern European, both women without a flicker of doubt condemn Claudio as insane - and yet on his death bed in a hospital outside Bologna where Esther visits him; she tells him of Alix's strange encounter with Jill. Claudio simply advises that all the Harrow murders are an expression of mass hysteria and for them to stop, then Esther herself must stop believing in them. Esther naturally refutes this possibility - how could she have influence on the masses - and Claudio advises that she does have that power.

The strange characters who confront Liz Headleand are slightly more diverse and numerous - there is Stephen Cox, writer, whom she meets after her marriage with Charles has dissolved. He is very strange, but he also refuses to have any particular influence on anyone. At the end of the novel, he is writing a play on Pol Pot. I think Liz's real nemesis is her mother, Rita Ablewhite whom she wishes were dead; she expresses disbelief and outrage, when a severe stroke does not carry Rita off. Liz the psychiatrist is the character who is supremely locked into the ideology of rationale thought - and yet she confesses to herself that her mind both knows and doesn't know.

What I found disturbing about all three main characters, Liz, Alix and Esther is that they all appear to be devoid of compassion, kindness or genuine care for The Other. This comes across right at the beginning when Liz is shocked, and deeply upset by Charles's sudden defection from their marriage of twenty years. Liz who has cared for his three sons, and also had a further two children with him, is caught completely unaware. She suffers a great deal, and calls upon her two friends, to help her through this difficult period. Liz discovers, however, that Alix and Esther are mostly indifferent and with further thought realises that they actually resent her affluence and her high-profile social life resulting from her connection with Charles and his work with television, broadcasting and the world of high-tech media.

Again the callousness comes across loud and clear with further examples from Alix and Esther's lives - they do demonstrate loyalty and certain principles; Alix in relation to her husband Brian and her refusal to encourage Otto Werner. Esther also in her long standing relationships with her various suitors and her friends. But to me there seems a strange hollowness in all of their lives.

I have to say although the book is long and definitely at some points verging on the tedious it does allow this long term and in-depth view of what happens to people and their relationships over time.
What lasts; what are the bases for a continued connection, what do they achieve in their lives and most importantly the background: the social, political and economic changes, not just in Britain but further afield; how do these changes impact and influence and mould the lives and experiences of these three women?

I can surmise that Drabble is aiming for a hyper-real realistic novel, where there is no plot. The characters don't know what is going to happen next; they are not able to plot out their lives. There are no smooth evolvements, no clear climbs to a higher, a more full-filling life, or even just a more affluent lifestyle. This in some ways makes the reading experience quite jolting - it's clear that the reader as the characters do sort of jolt along from one catastrophe or event to another. I accept this, it certainly breaks with "realistic" novels.

My other major complaint, however, is that in spite of the detail I felt disconnected from the three women. We are often allowed to hear them speak to each other, and often we have access to their inner thoughts, even their feelings about a particular event and yet somehow there is a surprising lack of depth to any of them. It's as if Drabble by asserting the importance of the three different and contrasting perspectives has also managed to lose our conviction of the reality of any of them. They all seem to come across as parts or segments of possibly herself, or characters she has studied and used in her novels; Rosamund in The Millstone has exactly the same structure of avoiding intimate partners as does Esther. And the sisters, Liz and Shirley are a facsimile of the real sisters who appear in nearly all of Drabble's earlier works.

I've just realised that the lack of wholeness or indeed of wholesomeness of our three main characters is deliberate. There is this scene in the morgue where Alix must identify Jilly's body - the head cut from the trunk. That! - suggests Drabble although not quite so literally is what has happened to the friends - the head, the intellect, disconnected from the body and heart.

Here is the fabulous scene between Alix and Jilly:

Jilly continued to gaze steadily at Alix, with a small smile gathering round her lips.
"I suppose you think I'm off my rocker," said Jilly.
Alix nodded, patiently, agreeably.
"Well, I think YOU are off YOURS," said Jilly. "I think you're mad. You're mad to have come here, for one thing."
"Actually," said Alix, "I suppose you could quite reasonably speak of embarking on eternal night. The image would be of a little boat upon a river of death? Or do you see it more as a sea? Setting off to sea?"
"You see," said Jilly, "Mad, quite mad."
"And now, I remember, you did say evil and good are one, so I suppose light and darkness might be one. So I take it back, about the inconsistency. But I still think it's melodramatic rubbish."
[Alix is referring to a letter Jilly wrote to her.]
"I think you'd better go," said Jilly. "I should never have let you come here. And anyway, as you see, I am quite all right."
"Oh, yes," said Alix, picking her way carefully back along the dark corridor towards the front door. "Yes, marvellous, I've never seen anyone more comfortably installed."
Jilly laughed. "Alix," she said, "you are mad, but you are wonderful."

You see - there is that natural warmth and kindness in Jilly. She can appreciate Alix's finer qualities even as the older woman rejects her. Jilly who has nothing - nothing at all.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite novels by Margaret Drabble ("The Realms of Gold" is another). Interesting, fully realized, characters maneuver their way through midlife. Drabble populates her novels with smart, complex women, but gives them a humanity that often eludes, for instance, Iris Murdoch. As a result, you race through a Drabble book because you really want to know how things turn out for the characters, whereas Murdoch 's works often fail to rise above the level of cerebral puzzle.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a collection of Drabble's short stories recently and decided to read one of her novels. But she's written many novels, so where to begin? In a quick scan of her novels, the one about England at the dawn of Thatcherism intrigued me. So here we are with The Radiant Way. Too long? Perhaps, but male writers get away with going on and on. What's the plot? Well, there are three women who are dealing with changes in England, changes from a bent to socialism to a belief in capitalism. Husbands are either subsumed by the prevailing pro-business attitudes or caught up in the plight of the Miners. Wives re-calibrate themselves to growing children, the need for smaller homes, and a country that no longer resembles the one they are used to. Three women who knew each other from college take walks along a canal and meet for holidays, holding back and then spewing forth opinions. If you lived through the early 1980s, or wish you did, you will find kindred spirits in Drabble's women.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was so sorry to come to the end of Margaret’s Drabble’s magnificent 1987 novel, The Radiant Way! What cheered me up was the belated discovery that it’s the first of a trilogy, so A Natural Curiosity (1989) and The Gates of Ivory (1991) went straight onto my wish-list to add to my Margaret Drabble shelf. I have become very fond of the characters Liz Headleand, Alix Bowen, and Esther Breuer, and I want to follow the further adventures of these brilliant women as they negotiate Thatcher’s Britain and their own middle age.

Drabble introduces this trio at a lavish New Year’s Eve party: Liz is a wealthy Harley Street psychotherapist but this is the first NY Eve party she’s ever thrown.


They have given many parties in their time, but on New Year’s Eve they have always gone out to the gatherings of others – sometimes to several gatherings in the course of the evening, and some years separately, not always meeting even for the magic chimes. A modern marriage, and some of its twenty-odd years had been more modern than others. Maybe. Liz reflects (f0r this is what she contemplates, through the oval mirror), maybe this is why they decided to have such a party, this year, at the end of this decade: as a sign that they had weathered so much, and were now entering a new phase? A phase of tranquillity and knowledge, of acceptance and harmony, when jealousies and rivalries would drop away from them like dead leaves? Well, why not? After twenty-one years, one is allowed a celebration. Charles will be fifty, she herself is forty-five. There is a symmetry about this, about their relationship with the clock of the century, that calls for celebration. (p. 6)

Alas for Liz, the new phase she enters into so abruptly on this night is separation from Charles, who has – to everyone’s astonishment – decided to leave her for Lady Henrietta Latchett. Dull, neat, and not even young and sexy. For Liz, the humiliation is comprehensive, not least when she realises that she is almost the last to know.

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2014/04/04/th...

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure whether to categorise this as being more the story of the lives of three women approaching middle age as the 1980s begins, or as the story of life in the 1980s shown by its effects on three women. Its a subtle difference of emphasis - back cover blurb very much suggesting the former, but after reading I favour the latter. The three women in question are all Cambridge University educated - Liz (successful psychoanalyst married to media mogul), Alix (teaches poetry to female convicts) and Esther (reclusive Art-historian). Their friendship endures, but the real drama of the narrative is not provided by their deeds, but by the times they live in, for this is 1980s Britain - uncaring, divisive, politicised. The 80s of serial killers, miners' strikes, social service cuts.
Drabble is such an authoritative voice, a ubiquitous omniscience that she somehow suffocates her story. The characters live, but are never allowed to breathe.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

So lately I've really been hungry for books about aging women, middle-aged women. This is one of those books. It opens with a New Year's Eve party at a ritzy London house, with the '80s looking over the curve of midnight. It focuses on three women, Liz, Alix, and Esther, who became friends when they all interviewed for places at Cambridge in the early 1950s, when higher education was first becoming available for people who hadn't had access to it before--women, working-class people. So they're in their mid-40s when the book begins, about 50 when it ends; the narrative tells us about their pasts, their families, but it's really about them negotiating their positions as middle-aged women in the turbulent 1980s, living their lives against the background of the miners' strike, AIDS, austerity, cuts, the destruction of the postwar consensus, the tearing of the social fabric, all the meanness and disruption of the Thatcher years. And it's pretty witty at times, too, playing interesting games with point of view and narrative voice.

[Michael Livingston · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book interested in both the big social issues of early 80s England and the complex psychologies of its three central characters. The perspective is basically middle-class, with some connections to working class roots, but they three friends who drive the book are such interesting and complicated people that you get a broad perspective on the bleak England of the early Thatcher era. Drabble delves into Freud, art, politics, crime and class, but it's all mostly in service to her characters - I'm looking forward to reading the sequels.

[Marisol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Libro escrito por la escritora inglesa Margaret Drabble, que ha sido un poco olvidada, sus libros por lo menos en español no se encuentran más que usados.

La historia gira en torno a 3 mujeres que se conocieron en la universidad, las tres de extracción pobre pero decididas a labrarse un futuro.

El libro inicia en la última noche del año de 1979, en la lujosa casa de Liz, quien se erige como la protagonista aunque, Alix y Esther también aparecen bastante en la novela.

Aunque la historia se mantiene en presente, se realiza mucha retrospectiva sobre eventos importantes de los años pasados que nos ayudan a forjarnos una idea de cada una.

Hay un párrafo perspicaz que encierra un poco el espíritu de la novela:

“Ahí estaban reunidos el empleado que carece de empleo, el sacerdote sin fe, el inversor a punto de ahorcarse en espera de la abundancia, el médico que no podrá curarse a sí mismo, el director que carece de rumbo, el historiador que niega la existencia de la historia, el erudito judío de la iconografía cristiana de principios del Renacimiento, el sordo que oye voces, la mujer a punto de ser sorprendida en adulterio.”

Se habla sobre todo de la movilidad social como forma de asegurarse una vida vivible por así decirlo, pero también se bordea que a lo mejor esa estabilidad no existe y es solo un espejismo que hemos creado para poder sentir esa seguridad que permita vivir sin estar siempre al borde.

A través de hechos sociales que se describen sin profundizar pero que tiran datos sin fin, como el desempleo, la crisis económica, el conflicto obrero, minero, educativo etc. vamos conociendo cómo afectan a las protagonistas, siendo las tres productivas, una psicóloga que durante toda la novela evita profundizar sobre sus traumas infantiles escondidos en un rincón tan profundo que la sola perspectiva de visitar a una madre que se ha mantenido encerrada por varias décadas parece imposibilitarla para respirar, la negación parece su antídoto; la profesora que enseña literatura pero debido a su empleo precario está constantemente lidiando con las cosas prácticas sobre todo de las que carece, y por último la historiadora de arte que vive encapsulada en una relación disfuncional con un amigo casi amante que ni siquiera la considera como una persona sino más bien su musa petrificada.

Aunque todo es interesante, la perspectiva de ver personajes femeninos complejos es atrayente, hay algo en la prosa que se traba y desbarranca, no sé si es la cantidad de datos por segundo, o lo superficial de algunas escenas largas, o que los acontecimientos que puedan detonar la novela se presentan de una manera abrupta como si a la autora no le interesaran, es como si todos los ingredientes son de buena calidad, parecen los correctos pero al probar el plato resulta que no sabe tan rico.

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

I consumed this book like comfort food - and it wasn’t junk but carefully-prepared dishes like smoked ham with onion sauce. It gave me a warm feeling of comradery, which is the strength of TV series featuring an enduring set of friends (though this novel’s three female characters are too discerning to waste their time watching the telly). Alix is the most grounded; Esther is enigmatic, otherworldly; Liz vacillates between contentment and turmoil. The novel opens with a New Year’s Eve party given by Liz and her husband at their posh Harley Street home; as 1980 is rung in Liz learns that her husband is leaving her for another woman. What follows covers a span of five years; the women’s lives are altered in many ways, some good, some bad. England itself (there’s a strong element of social commentary) is greatly altered, much for the worse. This is an ambitious, complex, intelligent book. It’s also a messy melange. But I have no desire to explore its faults. For nearly four hundred densely-packed pages it kept alive in me those feelings of comfort and comradery, and feelings sweep aside criticism. I thought Drabble might be going seriously off course in the book’s last fourth, but she righted the ship and sailed it into its berth – to the very place where it belonged.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had the same reaction to the Radiant Way that I had to Needle's Eye, I'm not sure if I truly liked it. I think part of the reason is that I found Way to be frustrating in the sense that I knew Drabble was making a comment on British society of a particular time, but since I lacked knowledge about the society of that time, it felt like some things went over my head. I know it's supposed to refer to Britain's Second Nation, but as I am not entirely sure what that is, the references confused me. I also found most of the characters annoying in the sense that they were so passive. What saves the book is the fourth character, the narrator, who is very snide and who reminds me of a gossip. I found myself wanting to get know that character more instead of the three central women.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel about women was probably groundbreaking in 1987, when it was published. Sadly, it hasn't aged well, nor does it reflect well on the British middle-class in the '80s. It tells the story of three women who became friends at university and traces their lives through middle age. The novel opens on New Year's Even 1979, at the beginning of a decade that saw a tremendous amount of upheaval in Great Britain. Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister during this time - she privatized a number of state-run entities, broke unions, closed down mines, waged war in the Falklands. While these events are taking place and sometimes affecting these women, they spend all their time worrying about appearance, where to live and who to take to bed.

Maybe I was not impressed by the book and the characters, who frankly irritated me, because I graduated from high school in 1980 and from college in 1984, the time spanned in the story. The times made a greater impact on me and shaped the decisions I made in my 20s much more than they affected these women. Now that I am about the same age as they were in the book, I find I am much more aware of current events and respond much more than Drabble would have her characters do.

Other than my personal response, the book was generally readable and had a few funny and a few poignant moments.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting character based novel set in Britain during the 1980s. It follows the lives of three women who met by chance at Cambridge and over the years continued their friendship. Liz Headland has been married for over twenty years to her second husband, Charles. Liz and Charles are financially successful and have stable careers. Liz is a psychiatrist. Liz and Charles between them five children and have settled into a contented family life. Liz’s friend Alix is a teacher and married. Esther is an art researcher who remains single.

Each woman is confident and fairly happy with their comfortable lives. The beginning on 1980 find life changing events occurring to all three women, making them having to reconsider their success in life and to try to hold onto their long friendship.

The novel covers a working woman’s issues of freedom, ambition and love in a London undergoing cultural and political uncertainty.

A clever, intelligent, well written novel with good character development and an interesting plot.

This book was first published in 1987.

[Lena Lighthouse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Books about human beings are my favourite. It's that simple. But to dissect a bunch of completely different characters sharply, critically yet emphatically, to get to their hearts, their essences, to what makes them tick, without reducing them to clichés, but making them even more complex and vivid, and thereby portraying life and society in its abundance, that's the hardest thing, and Virginia Woolf did it best, of course. But then Margaret Drabble happened to come into my life in a London bookshop and I fell in love. This novel is about some random people in Thatcher-era England, mostly women, and it captures them very introspectively through reflections, by pinpointing crucial details in their developments and idiosynchrasies as well as in intimate, everyday moments that serve to exemplify and crystallise their characters and thereby inductively paint a portrait of the mentality of a specific time and place. It doesn't have the beauty and flow of Woolf, but I enjoyed it so much and it reminded me of what reading can feel like: like being alive!

How illuminating it is to discover an author who resonates deeply on levels of reality, personality and literature!

[Vicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was frequently exasperated while reading this book because despite the meticulous and credible detail, I never felt I saw the characters clearly or understood their motivations. "Why did she do/think/feel *that*?" I kept wondering. No doubt the clues were right there in the text, but I missed them.

Still, I read to the end and was not sorry I had. I admire Drabble's austere realism, her refusal to deliver anything but facts or to steer the narrative in a direction that might be satisfying to the reader but not true to life. And I love her humor: some scenes are so drily, pricelessly funny (an acrimonious family Christmas, for example) that the book is worth reading just for the sake of those scenes.

[Michael Linden · Rating 4 out of 5]

I surprised myself by liking this book - a lot. I capriciously took it with me on a holiday to Bali last September and ended up not being able to put it down. Amazingly intricate and absorbing accounts of middle-class life in Thatcher's Britain seen through the eyes and minds of three female protagonists. A lot of well-crafted overlapping interlinking plots too. Recommended as a good intro to a writer who might otherwise be overlooked by literary snobs like me - especially men, that is.

[Lesley Moseley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this will be a book, or rather trilogy that I will return to, many times in the future. I forgot that I was even reading on my Pendo-pad, and felt like I was in the authors presence, listening to her telling me this graphic novel. Don't think I have ever really enjoyed serial books, but now can't wait for my library to buy these next two. So literary, rhythmic and of my era and peopled with the people I always wished I had been born as 'one of them'... Loved it.

[Boris · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best Drabble novel I have read so far.
Why is it good? Because it addresses the most interesting and important requirements of a novel - it helps us how to understand life. What Drabble succeeded in portraying is life in the Thatcher decade seen through the eyes of three protagonists. For those of you unfamiliar with the Thatcher decade, it was a time of tremendous social upheaval, revolutionary in fact. Britain had survived the catastrophe of WWII by unwinding its empire, and going into gentle decline for a whole generation as it wrestled with the potentially contradictory demands of increasing the quality of life for its workers and keeping down costs to remain economically competitive in world where the British Commonwealth was no longer a captive market for its products. By the 70s this had reached critical stage and the country was a mess. It was a decade of strikes and social unrest and my memories of it are of a London piled high with rubbish, dog shit on the streets and lights going out at school and home due to the power cuts. Britain had been surviving since the war by spending more than it was earning. Margaret Thatcher came in to "balance the books" and put an end the financial hemorrhage. Difficult decisions had to be made to cut costs by a dramatic scaling down of social and education grants and resisting automatic increases in wages for public (mostly union) employees. For this she was lauded by the few but derided by the many for being a heartless greengrocer's daughter who in Oscar Wilde's language understood the price of everything and the value of nothing. The other Margaret - our Drabble - portrays the angst that three middle aged ladies go through as they observe the effects of these changes on their own lives and the lives of those around them.
Why does the novel work? Because much like Flaubert does in L'education Sentimentale, Drabble focuses on life on the sidelines of the action and as a reader we can identify with this. This is the antithesis of the heroic novel, where the protagonist is at the center of the action. Here great events are glossed over, dismissed with a cursory sentence here or there. The Thatcher revolution only impacts one of the protagonists in that table cloths are dispensed with at the women's prison where she works (!) and her husband loses his job and briefly raises money for the miners' strike by walking around with a bucket requesting donations, only to find another job relatively quickly in his home town. However, just as in the life of a thinking person, most of the action goes on in the characters' minds as they evolve from students to middle age. There is dramatic action - a severed head is left in a protagonist's car - but the effects of this are deliberately underplayed by the author, who appears keen to keep all the action mental (pun intended).
Like in any good novel about life, all the important themes are there: birth, death, marriage, gender roles, divorce, feminism, education, housing, employment, adultery, sex, prison, transport, class, wealth, society, friendship, old age, insanity, parenting, murder, journalism, media,ambition, success, art, criticism, ethics, paradox, fatherhood, gerontology etc. Why etc? because it is almost certainly a novel which deserves a second read and I am sure that onion-like there are more layers to be revealed.
And the conclusion? Reminiscent of Voltaire's Candide, we have a fade out to a bucolic scene in the closing pages where the 3 ladies enjoy a pastoral sunset. Drabble being the intelligent woman she is, I can't help thinking she is parodying the typical TV films of the era, which ended with the hero riding off into the sunset. Works for me - as I haven't yet figured any better answers to life either.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

First in a trilogy, this book offers a deep dive into 1970s-1980s middle class/ upper middle class England. Great views of the worlds of academia, mass media, and psychology. This book requires a pretty substantial amount of reader attention and time, but Margaret Drabble, as always, rewards the reader with rich characters who are realistically flawed and constrained by a culture that, in many ways, remains frustratingly Victorian.

[Covadonga Diaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Empecé el libro en inglés y luego conseguí la versión en castellano. La historia de tres amigas en los primeros 80 en Inglaterra de algún modo me resultó cercana, me enganchó. Los personajes, la ambientación, la historia, todo lleva carga de profundidad.

[MH · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5* Insightful, witty, rich and captivating. Very pleased to have discovered Drabble, will definitely read more of her works.

[George P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this rather long novel would have benefitted by some editing-down, but I did like it. I was won over by the articulate writing and the character development set against the backdrop of the UK under the conservative Thatcher government. I would consider reading another Drabble novel.

[Ladyce West · Rating 5 out of 5]

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!!!

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been years since I wandered from "the radiant way" of Goodreads where I have been often happy recommending books. I will write only a half-review at this point because I am halfway through this most amazing book. I have dabbled in Drabble before and am wondering why a. I have not read her every word b. She is not ranked with Austen, Eliot and Lessing. Perhaps she is by cognoscenti but Drabble is not exactly a household word unless is is also the name of a kitchen product in the UK.

I will make a start, a humble attempt to do justice to this novel. What is excellent from the start is Drabble's gift of characterization. Three women meet at Cambridge: Liz, Alex and Esther; they become lifelong friends although their paths diverge---they grow; they take on life as the story progresses; we become fond of them and are genuinely interested, pained, amused by the turnings and twistings of their fates.
Drabble displays a magnificent wit in her scrutiny of character and setting: the novel takes place mainly during the reign of Margaret Thatcher. Hence the opportunities for Satire in the vein of the unparalleled Jane are frequent, and Drabble hits the mark with deadly accuracy.
More mulling is necessary while I progress through the pages. Let me tantalize you by stating, as can only be stated about Great Books, I will be somewhat devastated when this story ends.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first attempt at reading Margaret Drabble was with her novel, ‘The Ice Age’, a book I found boring and stuffy and when I started to read The Radiant Way, my opinion of her wasn’t changing. Somehow I started to really get the story and now I have a different view of her.

The Radiant Way focuses on the lives of three middle-aged women; Liz, Alix and Esther and how they cope with the ever turbulent eighties. There are moments of happiness and depressive ones. However despite all that happens their friendship still unites them.

I’m sure we all have read novels like this before but what makes Drabble stand out is that there’s some twists and turns in the lives of all the characters that are quite unpredictable plus The Radiant Way (named after a tv documentary Liz’s husband directs) criticises the Thatcher government quite openly, so there’s a heavy political slant to the novel.

Style-wise its beautiful, whereas The Ice Age was umm drab, the prose here was elegant but with a dry sense of humour running through it.

A solid read

[Lydia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a strange book to read in 2023. It's set and was written in the first half of the 1980s, which actually makes it a bit of a fascinating insight into the period and what the priorities and attitudes were of people (and especially women) living through that time. What was really interesting was how depressingly familiar a lot of the political and social problems experienced then are to now.

That being said, I did find it at times an alienating book, perhaps just because as familar as it all seems, I didn't actually live through those years (in fact I wasn't born till the year after the book was published) and it is so wrapped up in the lived experience of the time that there is something a little distant (imo) if you are reading it now looking back dispassionately. I also found one of the concurrent plot threads about a serial killer utterly distracting and unecessary to the book, which was a shame as it became a sort of lynchpin towards the end.

Still, it was really an interesting book to pick up (thanks Oval station book exchange!) and I'm glad I gave it a chance.

[Shovelmonkey1 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book and probably significant to the 1001 books list as it defines the time in which it was set (1979 - 1985), offering analysis, via the character lives, on political and social issues such as the miners strike, unemployment, the rise of the Tory government and Margaret Thatcher. I enjoyed reading this but it really didn't blow me away. I suspect, at the risk of sounding smug, that i'm actually too young to appreciate some of the more significant aspects covered by this book. I was born in the 1980's so don't really have any memory of a lot of the issues that the characters deal with. However, there are some surprising similarities and a neat synergy between the picket lines and unemployment that occurred then and what is occurring today in Britain as we face yet another recession and social and political instability and unrest.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first, I really struggled with the Radiant Way. It's over punctuated to a crazy extent, and felt very stilted for the first fourty pages or so. But once I got to know Liz, Esther and Alix, I suddenly found myself utterly engrossed. Nothing really happens in the Radiant Way. It's a chronicle of normal lives passing slowly. The three friends meet at their interviews for Cambridge, and are still great friends when the books ends, some 50 odd years later. A string of somewhat weak men pass them by, and the great recession of the 1980s grips Britain and rocks all of their lives. But ultimately, it's a tale of friendship weathering these storms, and I was able to let go of the weird punctuation and perhaps overwrought feelings occasionally because her characters were so strong. In the end, I liked this way more than I was anticipating.

[Ann Woodbury Moore · Rating 2 out of 5]

Drabble is a very "literary" writer, and this novel about three college friends from the U.K.--starting on New Year's Eve 1979, the beginning of a new decade, when they are in their mid-40's--rises above typical "chick lit" books. However, although the women lead interesting lives, the novel is overly long, contains too much symbolism, and is unevenly focused, with psychologist Liz receiving the bulk of the attention.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Margaret Drabble's novels. The complex characters are so real. The issues of the early 1980's are so perfectly encapsulated in the book. This is at least my second reading and it was still so enjoyable.

[Kjt · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I read this novel 25 years ago (probably my fourth or fifth work by Drabble) I fell in love with it. I felt at the time it was the best women's novel I'd ever read. Better than Atwood, Marge Piercy and many others. In my view, The Radiant Way is her best book.