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One of the reasons I chose to give myself a little reading project for 2024, was to help revitalise my enthusiasm for blogging. Although I read slower than I once did, my enthusiasm for that at least has never waned. Writing about the books I read has become more of an issue. However, despite my enjoyment of my Margaret Drabble reading this year – I haven’t even managed to write about all of the books I’ve read in full. The Realms of Gold was one of the books I read in May that I most wanted to write about. It’s a fairly complex novel – though not especially difficult to read, so I only hope I can do it some justice. It was an easy five star read for me, layers of brilliance and multiple themes with a strong, likeable heroine.
Frances Wingate is a successful archeologist, divorced with children, she has recently separated from her married lover Karel – despite knowing she loves him. The novel opens as Frances is abroad to deliver a lecture at an academic conference. Alone in her hotel room she remembers her relationship with Karel and their parting a few months earlier – willing him to come back to her. Karel’s marriage is very unhappy, and Frances believes Karel and she should be together, and yet, she ended their relationship almost on a whim. There’s a flashback to a rather unpleasant incident between Karel and his wife, which shows him ‘beating her up’ in frustrated fury – no doubt, it is indicative of the 1970s, that we are supposed to see this as a forgivable one off by a man driven to distraction and deeply unhappy. There are some things in books that don’t stand the test of time so well. There are a few sections of the novel told from Karel’s POV and he is a pretty decent guy, nothing like the above incident might suggest – it’s the kind of thing that is confusing for modern readers. Things like this don’t spoil books for me, they give me something else to think about – the wider context being a sociological one perhaps. There’s another male character in the book who is far more problematic – there’s no suggestion of violence, yet Drabble portrays him as controlling and difficult with chilling accuracy. I find the difference in Drabble’s own attitude to these men quite interesting.
Frances frequently suffers bouts of depression, depression we discover runs in the family, but Frances has learned to live it with, clawing her way out of it bit by bit.
“She still didn’t feel exactly cheerful, though the worst was over. She walked up and down for half an hour or more, muttering to herself, trying to divert the energy of the experience to some more useful end, but she was exhausted. It was, after all, as though some bad weather had passed over her, leaving her a little flattened, like a field after heavy rain. It would take her some time to shake it off and slowly uncrackle and unfurl herself again. Meanwhile, she walked up and down, and had another drink.”
Frances is a real grown up, she’s a strong, intelligent woman, who manages her career and four children with seeming ease. Her work focuses a lot on landscape and she has some passionate beliefs in the importance of landscape for the civilisations of the past. Some of the themes of this novel involve revealing the truths of the past, civilizations and their rituals, like marriage or funeral rites, the raising of children and supporting other relatives.
“Too much of the world was inhospitable, intractable… Why prove that it had ever once been green?”
Before flying home, Frances decides to send Karel a postcard telling him she loves him, sure that the mere sight of it will bring him back to her. There has been a postal strike in the country where the conference is being held but Frances doesn’t take that into account at all. Once at home she resumes her usual normal family life – waiting for Karel to get in touch. She visits her parents, and her brother, who has struggled with depression, and solved it with drink. She worries about her nephew Stephen who has found himself with a wife and baby while still very young, and with his wife hospitalised for a mental health condition, he is trying to manage everything on his own. In time we see Frances was right to be concerned. There is another academic conference on the horizon, and by the time she leaves, she still hasn’t heard from Karel.
Interestingly, we also get a glimpse of some of Frances’ unknown relatives in the East Midlands. David; a distant cousin, is a geologist, working very much within the same world as Frances; he is in the audience when she gives her speech at the start of the novel As Frances still uses her married name, he has no idea of the family connection, and it isn’t until later in the novel, at another academic conference in Africa that they finally meet. Frances makes a kind of pilgrimage to the rural East Midlands town of Tockley where she and her brother holidayed as children, not realising there is a cousin living just down the road who she passes in the street. We meet this cousin, Janet, living in what feels like a small, stifling Lincolnshire town, coping with the rigours of a young baby, married to a rather horrible, slightly controlling man, (who I referred to above) who is virtually no help at all, and has stripped away any confidence that Janet might have once had, she dislikes sex and tries to avoid his nightly, advances.
“Her neighbour was a constant threat to her, and she would avoid encounters if she possibly could. It was not that there was anything overtly threatening about her – on the contrary, it was her very meekness that constituted the menace. She was an awful warning, – poor Jean Cooper, of what Janet herself so nearly was timid, nervous, gauche, sad, unfinished. She lived in the downstairs flat of the house next door, with her silent husband, and she was going mad, Janet thought, from boredom, so mad that she would even overcome her shyness to talk endlessly, nervously, over the garden hedge.”
Later, when an unexpected family crisis brings her home from the African conference early, Frances meets Janet, and on meeting the husband, knows just what kind of man he is.
Drabble weaves all these strands together brilliantly, her world becomes immersive and Frances was a pleasure to spend time with. What a fascinating writer Margaret Drabble is.
This does sound complex, plenty of food for thought. And I’m delighted that I have it in that little pile of Drabble Penguins I bought – it has a horrendous cover!
I found this so immersive and yes, so much to think about. Someone has to buy up those all penguin editions with terrible covers. I’m glad you have this one ready to read.
What do you mean: what could be better than this silhouettey woman lying across the cover with her nose pressed into a picturesque country cottage seemingly built on a pile of out-of-focus leaves partly shadowed and partly sunshiney? Ali’s cover is sooo boring. 😉
Haha! That’s the one 😂
This sounds like such an interesting book, it’s interesting to think of the changes in the sociology but also to think whether a novel about a female archaeologist would be published today. I’m glad you were able to write about this one as it doesn’t feel like one of her terribly well-known novels and it sounds like a good one people will want to read.
It was brilliant. Those changes in society are always fascinating to me. You may be right about it’s appeal now, perhaps why it wasn’t one of the novels reissued by Cannongate.
Ha! I give you Vivian Rose Spencer doing Egyptology in A God in Every Stone by Kamila Shamsie!!
Published about 2014, I think, it was shortlisted for the now defunct DSC South Asian literature prize.
This was the novel which brought me back to reading Drabble – I’d read and loved The Millstone in my teens and early 20s but hadn’t got on with the other Drabble novels I tried, but in my 50s picked this one up because the main character was an archaeologist and I like novels with an archaeological setting … and became hooked on Drabble. It was such a pleasure to be in the hands of an author who writes so well: characters, setting, style and (though this bothers me least) plot. I’m now working my way through them all, and inspired by your project am now trying to read them in order of writing … and finding it fascinating to what her style develop into the mature Drabble. Thank you for inspiring me to do this
I can understand why this one reignited your interest in Drabble. It’s such a good novel. I am glad I could inspire you.
Thank you for writing about this one Ali. I really appreciated reading your thoughtful and comprehensive review with interesting quotes . I am very drawn to this one and think I remember seeing it recently (in the same purplish cover as yours) in a charity shop, so I will have to try to remember which one and hope it is still there!
As I think you know, I loved A Summer Bird Cage but did not like some of the others I’ve tried this year as much but this one does sound very good with complex characters and well developed interactions between them.
Ooh I hope you’re able to go back and snap it up. I really hope you do like this if you get to read it.
I picked up the 1980’s Penguin copy of Realms of Gold from our local recycle shop this morning for the bargain price of 50p! 😊It;s soft back and not such a striking cover as yours but easy to carry around. I am looking forward to getting to read it (but I do have quite a large tbr at the moment!).
Ooh that was a lucky find, well done. My copy was a bit heavy to carry around, I hardly go out these days but had to lug that one with me to the hospital.
This does sound very good Ali – a really complex and involving saga. Interesting what you say about changes in attitude, as I often think that books from the 1960s/1970s and even perhaps the 1980s don’t always carry that well into the 21st century, however good they are. Having lived through some of that era, I can recall what it was like, and perhaps for me the bad parts are too close to the surface. However, it *is* shocking to look back and realise how things like domestic violence were pretty much acceptable at the time.
I really enjoy seeing those differences from the 1970s/80s I find it so fascinating – possibly because it was in my lifetime. I was too young in the 70s to understand how society worked, but now I find it amazing to look back at how it was in reality.
P.S (Being of a similar age to you – I think), I really like your comment in response to kaggsy’s about how society worked in the 1970s. I find it very interesting to look back on the 1970s from an adult perspective too.
Yes, I was a child in the 70, (11 in 78) so my memories of it are different and less reliable than my memories of the 80s. I do remember power cuts though.
Goodness, this sounds like another must-read from Margaret Drabble’s oeuvre. I’m kicking myself for not having started sooner with her as I’d somehow formed the (incorrect) impression that she was outdated or fusty in some way, when in fact she’s anything but. Once again, she’s tackling some dark, complex issues here and the characterisation seems typically excellent. I shall have to get back to her soon!
I know, I had read a couple of Drabble novels before but years ago! I’m so enjoying discovering her excellent writing. I’m now reading a collection of short stories.
MArgaret Drabble was at the Belfast Book Festival this week and I was gutted that I wasn’t able to go and hear her. This sounds great Ali.
Oh wow, I’m not surprised you were disappointed to miss her. I’m sure that would have been fantastic.