The Pure Gold Baby by Margaret Drabble
My rating: 3/5 cats
somehow, this is my very first margaret drabble novel.
i know.
and while i can look at it objectively and see the strength of its craft, it never really grabbed me as a reader. part of that is due to the shape of the book: it is ostensibly about jess and her pure gold, developmentally disabled baby anna, but it is told at a remove, through a friend of jess’ named nellie. nellie seems to have quite a lot of access to jess and her thoughts and actions, but still – at the end of the day – there is a barrier between the narrator and subject that makes it read more like a biography of someone unknown and unspectacular rather than a work taking advantage of the rich emotional possibilities a novel affords. and that’s fine; that is a perfectly valid way to write a book, but the synopsis promised me this was written from the point of view of the group of mothers who surround Jess, and that’s just not true. there is still only one POV here, despite her perceived authority to tell jess’ story, and the stories of everyone surrounding jess. i think if there had been a chorus of voices and perspectives, it would have made for a fuller story. instead, it is as problematic as that “other” literary nelly, through whose filter we get the bulk of wuthering heights.
it is a novel in which nothing dramatic or tumultuous happens. it begins in the 60’s, in london, with anthropologist jess becoming pregnant after an affair with her married professor, finding out that anna isn’t like other little girls, and raising her alone through a series of personal events set against a larger backdrop of historical ones. the writing is unsentimental, not quite stark, but there is something of the montage-feel to it. some people will find this lovely and muted, but to me, it is a little dull.
there are moments of quiet sparkle. one character is described as having resigned himself to a life of unproductive daily anguish, which is a sentiment to which i can relate, but although we are given insight into jess’ inner thoughts, again, it is through this filter that for me, was an obstacle to really getting to the heart of the character, and no amount of prose-sparkle can be a substitute for an engaging character.
i wish i had liked this book more, but even though it was not to my particular tastes, i will give drabble another chance. i can definitely see other people liking this one a lot, i just have never really responded to this kind of quiet storytelling. at one point, anna is described as having no story to her life, no plot. The concept of progress did not apply to Anna. and that sums up my reaction precisely: occasionally beautiful, but echoless and empty.
karenfail.
