October 22, 2013
Gift from the Sky
Donna
Tartt’s new novel The Goldfinch came out today, and I’ve been looking forward to it. I remember when The Little Friend came out in 2002 and it was such an event. I was very broke, living on cans of tuna and long-life milk, sleeping on the bottom bunk of a bed in backpackers’s hostel in the Midlands. It seems momentous to be buying her new book all these years later, to measure out my own life by Donna Tartt releases: I own a couch now. The intervening decade has been good. So I trekked to the bookstore just now to pick it up, and also to get Kelli Deeth’s new collection The Other Side of Youth. (Read Deeth’s wonderful piece from yesterday about her devotion to the short story form).
So there I was at Book City, and in a hurry too because I had sweet potatoes in the oven, and what do I discover: Margaret Drabble has a new novel!! The Pure Gold Baby, just out at the beginning of this month. I had no idea! Can you believe it? The universe offering up one of my chiefest delights (to be reading a Margaret Drabble for the very first time) like it was nothing. And it’s even meant to be good, this book, and Meg Wolitzer says so. I am so excited. As if yesterday’s bookish gifts weren’t enough…
I haven’t read much Margaret Drabble, but I was not overly thrilled with Pure Gold Baby. If you are a Drabble fan it will be interesting to see what you think.
I am obsessed with Margaret Drabble, and reread her books regularly. She’s a bit peculiar, her later books in particular. I get the sense they’re part of a grander project involving the shape of narrative in general. They’re experimental, but not in the usual ways. I relish them though for their Drabbleness. I also think I forgive her much!