Margaret Drabble

Margaret Drabble is a consummate chronicler of London, which she knows ‘as thoroughly as any novelist has ever known any city’, according to Joyce Carol Oates. Her insightful, affecting novels about the inner lives of conflicted women as they navigate the change-filled terrain of the 1960s onward (including ambition and motherhood), have been much loved and celebrated.

Her eighteenth novel, The Pure Gold Baby, explores single motherhood and disability, through the life of anthropologist Jess, who has an affair with a professor that results in ‘pure gold baby’ Anna, a special needs child who will need Jess’s care for the rest of her life, altering its course forever in complex ways.

The Australian declares Drabble – a former editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature – ‘at the height of her game’ in this ‘adroit’ novel, one that has been compared to her 1965 classic The Millstone.

The Wheeler Centre presents two exciting events featuring Margaret Drabble – one in partnership with the Geelong Regional Library Corporation and Geelong Performing Arts Centre, where Ms Drabble will appear in conversation with local arts identity Kaz Paton, and a second, a morning tea chez nous, where Ms Drabble will be in conversation with Ramona Koval. Tiffin is included in the ticket price, and those present will have a unique opportunity to share a bite and a cuppa with the great dame of literature.