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Product Description
Product Description
Penguin Decades bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood. All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling.
Margaret Drabble's The Millstone was published in 1965. Set in a London not yet quite swinging, where sexual liberation is still on its way, this prize-winning novel follows the progress of Rosamund Stacey, who becomes pregnant as a result of a one night stand, and must adapt to life as a single mother - finding herself transformed in the process.
About the Author
Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield in 1939 and read English at Cambridge. She was awarded a DBE in 2008. Since the 1960s she has written 17 novels - The Millstone was her third - and she has also edited two editions of The Oxford Companion to English Literature. She is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is very much a book of the place and times (England, mid 60s). An intellectual, rather naive young woman gets pregnant at a time when unmarried mothers were very much frowned upon, and keeps the baby. (Hence the title.) Nevertheless the book is an insight into the times, is very well written, never drags, and captures all the characters just perfectly.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"The Millstone", first published in 1965 (and probably the first book to be typeset by computer), is the story of Rosamund, a PhD student who, on becoming pregnant after a one-night stand, decides to keep the child.
The first thing that struck me about this book was its datedness. For example, it begins with Rosamund describing booking into a hotel under an assumed name with a fake wedding ring in order to spend the night with her boyfriend.
However, despite this datedness and the unsympathetic nature of the narrator (Rosamund is rather cold and superior), I soon became absorbed in "The Millstone" and finished it greatly admiring Drabble's skill in portraying Rosamund's emotional development so realistically and movingly.
The first thing that struck me about this book was its datedness. For example, it begins with Rosamund describing booking into a hotel under an assumed name with a fake wedding ring in order to spend the night with her boyfriend.
However, despite this datedness and the unsympathetic nature of the narrator (Rosamund is rather cold and superior), I soon became absorbed in "The Millstone" and finished it greatly admiring Drabble's skill in portraying Rosamund's emotional development so realistically and movingly.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
These days, it's hard to believe that anyone could write a whole novel just about unplanned pregnancy and being a single mother, but in 1965 Rosamund Stacey found herself in what was then a rather unusual and controversial situation.
This is not a novel of gritty realism. Rosumund is a middle-class intellectual living in a paid-for flat with a sociable, liberal, open-minded lodger who helps out with childcare. There is nothing of the drudgery, tedium and exhaustion of single parenthood on a tight budget that the modern reader might expect. Rather, it focuses on Rosamund's emotions, and how her attitudes, expectations and priorities change when she becomes a mother.
As ever, Margaret Drabble writes fluently and evocatively, with fine attention to detail.
This is not a novel of gritty realism. Rosumund is a middle-class intellectual living in a paid-for flat with a sociable, liberal, open-minded lodger who helps out with childcare. There is nothing of the drudgery, tedium and exhaustion of single parenthood on a tight budget that the modern reader might expect. Rather, it focuses on Rosamund's emotions, and how her attitudes, expectations and priorities change when she becomes a mother.
As ever, Margaret Drabble writes fluently and evocatively, with fine attention to detail.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
The Unexpected Blessings of Motherhood
A courageous account of single motherhood in the 1960s. Rosamund Stacey is a PhD student specializing in Elizabethan poetry. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Kate Hopkins
A disappointment, given that it comes from the pen of a leading...
There is a long tradition in English literature of novels about unmarried mothers, dating back at least to Elizabeth Gaskell's "Ruth" and Hardy's "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" in the... Read more
Published 8 months ago by J C E Hitchcock
If you can remember this then you weren't there
A rather dated tale of an ill-prepared unmarried single mother. Some people might regard this as a good juxtaposition of the, probably over-exaggerated stories of the hedonistic... Read more
Published 20 months ago by K. Voce
Before Sixties started swinging ...
This was published in 1965 and even when I read it in the late 1970s, it seemed hopelessly dated. As a young woman in my 20s, safely in the Pill generation, I couldn't relate to... Read more
Published 22 months ago by booksetc
Unplanned pregnancies in the sixties
This novel is a descrition of the experience of a single girl finding herself pregnant after a one night stand in the sixties, prior to the Abortion Act and reliable contraception. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Late starter
A first person account of being
Rosamund Stacey is the first person narrator of her own story in the Millstone by Margaret Drabble. Rosamund is a single mother - nothing strange about that, perhaps, at least in a... Read more
Published on 1 Mar 2008 by Philip Spires
Lucky in work, unlucky in love
This moving short novel portraits the rude awakening of a young woman, who after making love with a 'silly bugger' becomes an unmarried mother. Read more
Published on 4 Jan 2006 by Luc REYNAERT
A review: Margaret Drabble's 'Millstone'
Drabble's 'Millstone' is very well written and thoughtful yet a fairlyeasy read. Evocative of the London literary milieu of the 1960s, itfocuses on the discovery of identity and... Read more
Published on 25 April 2004
Intellectual girl facing reality of life
This is a touching story, one snapshot of an unusual woman's life written nicely, wittingly and intellectually. Read more
Published on 13 Aug 2000 by Hyowon Lee
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