A Natural Curiosity

(Paperback, Main - Canons)

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January 1987. Alix Bowen has moved away from London to Yorkshire. There, she regularly visits a mass-murderer in a high-security prison. But has her natural curiosity in his motives and character crept into obsession Meanwhile, Alix's life continues to cross and uncross with her old friends Liz and Esther, now all in their fifties. As the years pass, they increasingly question the brutally prosperous and atrocity-hungry society they live in, and their complicity in it, as they navigate life in 1980s Britain. The second in a trilogy following on from The Radiant Way and finishing with The Gates of Ivory, A Natural Curiosity sees Margaret Drabble return with her brilliant and dark wit in this bold, generous and incisive portrait of the time.

Reviews

'I have learned so much from Margaret Drabble's work. Her prose is very beautiful, very funny, and at the same time very serious' - SALLY ROONEY

'Absorbing and thought-provoking' - The Sunday Times

'A remarkable mixture of . . . compelling narrative, psychological insight, generous human portrayal, acute observation, humour, horror, beauty and disgust' - Times Literary Supplement

'Confident and marvellously accomplished new novel' - London Review of Books

'One of the most thought-provoking and intellectually challenging writers around' - Financial Times

Author Bio

Dame Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield in 1939 and was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. She is the author of eighteen highly acclaimed novels including The Millstone, The Peppered Moth and most recently The Pure Gold Baby. A Natural Curiosity is the second in a trilogy, preceded by The Radiant Way and followed by The Gates of Ivory. She has also written biographies, screenplays and was the editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature. She was appointed CBE in 1980, and made DBE in the 2008 Honours list. She was also awarded the 2011 Golden PEN Award for a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature. She is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd.