July 18, 2005

Konstantin

I love Margaret Drabble. I am reading the afore mentioned “Gates of Ivory” and absolutely loving it. It’s the final book in “The Radiant Way” trilogy, which got me on my Drabble kick in the first place, though it concerns less the three women of the first two books than one of their friends, Stephen Cox, who is missing somewhere in Asia. In Thailand, he has met up with a young photographer called Konstantin Vassiliou who I realised was a character in “The Needle’s Eye”, which was published in 1972. “Gates of Ivory” was published two decades later. In the former, Konstantin was the son of the main character, maybe ten years old? And now he turns up again, grown up in the mid-eighties. There is no reason that had to have happened. Konstantin in “The Needle’s Eye” could have been a forgettable character, and that Margaret Drabble would choose to resurrect him is just fascinating. I look forward to finding out why she did as the story develops. Her characters frequently recur, but just in passing. I absolutely love that world.