It's hard to get across just how flat-out thrilling, how readable, how absorbing is Margaret Drabble's novel The Seven Sisters. It sounds positively dull when you describe it: Candida Wilton, a faculty wife of late middle age, has been dumped by her allegedly do-gooder husband. Her three daughters aren't too impressed with her, either. The mousy Candida decamps to an inglorious flat in London, where she measures out her time in visits to the health club, trips to the grocery store, and her weekly evening class on Virgil. She tentatively makes a few new friends and rediscovers some old ones. This opening section of the book, told in diary form, is a marvel of tone. With very little action, Drabble makes Candida's forays into the world quietly electrifying. One of her new pleasures is recording in her diary her mounting dislike of her ex-husband. You sense a giddy freedom: "Andrew had come to seem to me to be the vainest, the most self-satisfied, the most self-serving hypocrite in England. That kindly twinkle in his eyes had driven me to the shores of madness."

Ah, but there's more life for Candida yet. A small, unexpected inheritance is left to her, and so she organizes her friends--all female, mostly aged, mostly unmarried--into a tour of Naples as Virgil describes it in The Aeneid. Their holiday is a fictional tour-de-force: by turns a hilarious send-up of group dynamics, a metafictional lark, a feminist rant, and a dark acknowledgement of Candida's mortality. In the end, Drabble's novel is a very serious one, and a very good one. --Claire Dederer


From Publishers Weekly
The narrator of Drabble's teasingly clever new novel, like several of her fictional predecessors (in The Witch of Endor and The Peppered Moth) is a lonely, middle-aged woman disillusioned with her life and wary about her future. Betrayed and divorced by her husband, the smug headmaster of a school in Suffolk, and estranged from her three grown daughters, Candida Wilton moves to a flat in a rundown, slightly dangerous London neighborhood. To fill her days, she takes a class in Virgil, until the adult-ed building is taken over by a health club, which she joins for lack of anything better to do. The first section of the narrative is Candida's computer diary, in which she tries to make sense of the circumstances that have led her to this narrow place in her life, and her tentative efforts to reach out and make new friends. Though she apologizes for "the bleating, whining, resentful, martyred tone I seem to have adopted," Candida's account has the fresh veracity of someone who's a newcomer to London and to the state of being single. While Drabble paints her as sexually cold and maternally reserved, given to French phrases and snobbish assessments, Candida is a character the reader grudgingly admires as she tries to maintain hope that she can turn her life around. Then a small miracle occurs. A financial windfall allows her to take some of her fellow Virgil aficionados and two old friends on a trip to Tunis and Sicily, following the footsteps of Aeneas. Candida learns more about her companions as the trip progresses and gains some insights into her own behavior. The narrative takes several surprising turns, throwing the reader as off-center as Candida has become and proving that Candida herself has not been candid. But Drabble has: Candida's evasive account accurately charts the psychological territory of one who is suddenly cast adrift.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Drabble returns with another novel featuring an intelligent woman facing late middle age alone. Like the protagonists of The Peppered Moth and The Witch of Exmoor, Candida Wilton finds herself in a sad predicament partially of her own making. Although the divorce following her headmaster husband's betrayal was shattering, Candida's subsequent estrangement from her daughters has roots in her rather cold personality, and it was wholly her choice to move from her Suffolk home to a seedy section of London. Naturally reserved and more than a little snobbish, she nevertheless struggles to build a new life, recording her progress in a laptop computer diary (in which Candida reveals herself as the least candid of narrators). A sudden change in finances sends Candida to Tunisia and Italy, following the journeys of Virgil's Aeneas in the company of six spiritual "sisters," which leads to unexpected plot twists. The author's clever observations and well-crafted prose move the narrative along and manage to sustain reader interest in, and even arouse sympathy for, a character who describes herself accurately as having "much to be ashamed about." For most fiction collections.--Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VACopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Drabble's shrewd and charming diarist-narrator escaped the prison of her unhappy marriage after the death of a student led to exposure of her head-master husband's affair with the girl's mother. Candida chooses not to stay in Suffolk and strangle in the web of gossip but rather to purchase a condo in a not altogether safe yet intriguingly multicultural London neighborhood. There she determinedly explores her new world and signs up for a class on Virgil's Aeneid. When the College for Further Education is transformed into a health club, she misses Virgil and the simpatico company of her fellow students and instructor. So she reconvenes the group, adds two demanding friends from her previous life, and convinces "the seven sisters" to embark on a pilgrimage to retrace the steps Virgil took in his tracking of Aeneas. And what a transforming journey it is. Drabble's prose is lustrous and enchanting, and her play on classical themes adds dimension to her discerning assessment of our digitized, global society, and the metamorphosis of a woman poised not for the expected capitulation to age and isolation but, rather, for splendid renewal. As in The Witch of Exmoor (1997) and The Peppered Moth [BKL F 15 01], Drabble creates a subversively witty novel that rivals works by Anita Brookner, Margaret Atwood, and Penelope Lively. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"As meticulous as Jane Austen, and as deadly as Evelyn Waugh." -The Los Angeles Times



Review
"As meticulous as Jane Austen, and as deadly as Evelyn Waugh." -The Los Angeles Times



Book Description
When circumstances compel her to start over late in her life, Candida Wilton moves from a beautiful Georgian house in lovely Suffolk to a two-room, walk-up flat in a run-down building in central London--and begins to pour her soul into a diary. Candida is not exactly destitute. So, is the move perversity, she wonders, a survival test, or is she punishing herself? How will she adjust to this shabby, menacing, but curiously appealing city? What can happen, at her age, to change her life?
In a voice that is pitch-perfect, Candida describes her health club, her social circle, and her attempts at risk-taking in her new life. She begins friendships of sorts with other women-widowed, divorced, never married, women straddled between generations. And then there is a surprise pension-fund windfall . . .
A beautifully rendered story, this is Margaret Drabble at her novelistic best.




From the Inside Flap
From the celebrated author of The Peppered Moth and The Witch of Exmoor, a splendid novel about starting over late in life

Candida Wilton-a woman recently betrayed, rejected, divorced, and alienated from her three grown daughters-moves from a beautiful Georgian house in lovely Suffolk to a two-room walk-up flat in a run-down building in central London. Candida is not exactly destitute. So is the move perversity, she wonders, a survival test, or is she punishing herself? How will she adjust to this shabby, menacing, but curiously appealing city? What can happen, at her age, to change her life? And yet, as she climbs the dingy communal staircase with her suitcases, she feels both nervous and exhilarated.
There is a relationship with a computer to which she now confides her past and her present. And friendships of sorts with other women - widows, divorced, never married, women straddled between generations. And then Candida's surprise inheritance...
A beautifully rendered story, this is Margaret Drabble at her novelistic best.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"When Candida Wilton arrives alone in London, divorced and rejected and without much money, she is filled with a strange sense of excitement. What can happen, at her age, to change her fortunes? How will she adjust to this shabby, violent, yet curiously attractive city? When Candida starts writing her diary, she expects that she will fill it with the small events with which she pads out her empty life, but she has always had a secret belief that despite all she is a lucky person. And she is right, in a sense, for when an unexpected windfall brings her sudden riches, her horizons broaden." Gathering together six travelling companions - women friends from childhood, from married life and after - Candida maps out the journey she has long dreamed of: to Tunis, Naples and Pompeii. Finally, she has realized that one can make anything happen, if one has the nerve.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times Book Review

Engaging the emotions and the intellect simultaneously and possessed of a rare technical ease, "The Seven Sisters" is an unusually satisfying novel.

Book Magazine

Recently divorced from her perfect husband and estranged from her three adult daughters, Candida Wilton moves away from the English countryside to a London flat. Drabble's fourth novel begins as Candida's diary and concentrates on those moments in which Candida experiments with different ways to tell the story of her life. A master of quirky, richly drawn characters, Drabble is attuned to people on the brink of unexpected change, and Candida, somewhat tentative at the beginning of the novel, ultimately becomes a seductive and confident narrator. Echoing much of Drabble's fiction, this novel tells us that narrative anchors and shapes people's lives, and it reminds us that reading is always an act of self-creation. Author￯﾿ﾽStephanie Foote

Book Magazine - Stephanie Foote

Recently divorced from her perfect husband and estranged from her three adult daughters, Candida Wilton moves away from the English countryside to a London flat. Drabble's fourth novel begins as Candida's diary and concentrates on those moments in which Candida experiments with different ways to tell the story of her life. A master of quirky, richly drawn characters, Drabble is attuned to people on the brink of unexpected change, and Candida, somewhat tentative at the beginning of the novel, ultimately becomes a seductive and confident narrator. Echoing much of Drabble's fiction, this novel tells us that narrative anchors and shapes people's lives, and it reminds us that reading is always an act of self-creation.

Publishers Weekly

The narrator of Drabble's teasingly clever new novel, like several of her fictional predecessors (in The Witch of Endor and The Peppered Moth) is a lonely, middle-aged woman disillusioned with her life and wary about her future. Betrayed and divorced by her husband, the smug headmaster of a school in Suffolk, and estranged from her three grown daughters, Candida Wilton moves to a flat in a rundown, slightly dangerous London neighborhood. To fill her days, she takes a class in Virgil, until the adult-ed building is taken over by a health club, which she joins for lack of anything better to do. The first section of the narrative is Candida's computer diary, in which she tries to make sense of the circumstances that have led her to this narrow place in her life, and her tentative efforts to reach out and make new friends. Though she apologizes for "the bleating, whining, resentful, martyred tone I seem to have adopted," Candida's account has the fresh veracity of someone who's a newcomer to London and to the state of being single. While Drabble paints her as sexually cold and maternally reserved, given to French phrases and snobbish assessments, Candida is a character the reader grudgingly admires as she tries to maintain hope that she can turn her life around. Then a small miracle occurs. A financial windfall allows her to take some of her fellow Virgil aficionados and two old friends on a trip to Tunis and Sicily, following the footsteps of Aeneas. Candida learns more about her companions as the trip progresses and gains some insights into her own behavior. The narrative takes several surprising turns, throwing the reader as off-center as Candida has become and proving that Candida herself has not been candid. But Drabble has: Candida's evasive account accurately charts the psychological territory of one who is suddenly cast adrift. (Nov.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal