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The Radiant Way (en ANGLAIS) [Paperback]

Margaret Drabble (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback
  • Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd (1988)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0140101683
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140101683
  • ASIN: B001ILOC5O
  • Product Dimensions: 17.8 x 11.2 x 2.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,702,287 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Margaret Drabble
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Product Description

It begins on December 31, 1979. Liz Headland, Alix Bowen, and Esther Breuer - "the oldest of old friends," part of one another's lives since their Cambridge days twenty-five years earlier - have gathered at Liz's home, where a sprawling New Year's Eve party is about to begin... Liz is perfectly pulled together, as always; unassumingly elegant ("quite satisfactory," she might say). A successful psychotherapist, she handles career, marriage (twenty years), children (five), and an active social life (two hundred friends expected tonight), with an almost unnatural ease: to the world she seems a rock of good sense, warmth and strength... Alix, glowing with health, is there without her husband. He'll arrive later; she's completely understanding. She's also compulsively generous, and committed: to her husband, her sons, her friends, and her students; young women in prison - her commitments burning on a fuel of highly politicized ideals and volatile romanticism... Esther looks familiarly eccentric (but precisely groomed) in her well-worn embroidered Chinese dress. Diminutive in stature, she stands out by virtue of an arresting strength of mind and a fantastic array of interests: from the obscure Italian Renaissance artist who is her life's work to the mad contemporary Italian anthropologist who is her life's obsession... Three friends with good lives - not extravagant, not without problems, but full and fulfilling, lived with intelligence and ardor, and studded with pleasures. Yet, as the seventies give way to the eighties, what each ahs assumed for herself, what each has grown accustomed to, gives way to the unexpected and to upheaval. As we follow them through the next five years, we see their world changing around them and we see each woman confronted with difficult, often painful, truths - about this new world and, more profoundly, about herself within it. The narrative, woven through with the past, reveals the intertwining roads the women have.

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Customer Reviews

3.8 out of 5 stars
4 reviews
3.8 out of 5 stars
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars The changing lives of three women in 1980s Britain. 30 Jun 2000
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
The Radiant Way is the first of a trilogy which deals with the lives of three female friends who first met at Cambridge during the 1950s. The novel commences at a New Year's Eve party in 1979 and progresses through the first half of the 1980s. The dawn of the new decade presents changes in the lives of Liz Headleand, Alix Bowen and Esther Breuer. Liz left behind her northern origins to become a Harley Street Consultant Psychiatrist. Alix teaches English Literature in a Young Female Offenders Institute, and Esther is an Art Historian with a passion for Italy.

The changing personal lives of the three central characters are intricately intermingled with the changing political and social landscape of the early 1980s' under the new Thatcher government.

Drabble succeeds in creating three believable characters with their own psyches and histories. Details of how they first met and arrived at the present points in their lives are revealed through a series of 'flashbacks' which enhances the depths of the characters portrayed. Other minor characters are introduced throughout, some of whom are reasonably well developed in terms of their motivations and desires. This is set against a backdrop of the wider arena of a rapidly changing society.

In addition to the main story-line, Drabble introduces various sub-plots such as a family mystery and a serial killer prowling the streets of London. Furthermore she addresses and explores certain issues which were topical during the decade. These include the much contested subject of a north/south divide, government cutbacks in education and industry, the impending miners strike, and the increase in unemployment to name but a few....

This is definitely a good read in terms of portraying how the political impacts upon individual personal lives.

Some of the characters, as well as some of the themes are further developed during the two sequels A Natural Curiosity and The Gates of Ivory. Read more ›

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Picture of the 1980s and Three Loveable Women 19 Jan 2012
By Kate Hopkins TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
'The Radiant Way' is the first (and to my mind in some ways the strongest) of a trilogy of novels dealing with three women living in London in the 1980s and their families and friends. Liz, Alix and Esther are all from very different backgrounds in Northern England, but (thanks in part to the grammar school system - though much abused these days it did give some working-class people a real chance for a better life) all gain places at Cambridge and become inseparable friends. 'The Radiant Way' follows their lives from New Year's Eve 1979 through to the mid-1980s. Thatcher's Britain is vividly brought to life in all its horrors: increased financial greed; miners' strikes; cuts to education; the rich getting richer and the poor poorer. But Drabble also shows the beauty of London with its great variety of landscape, and describes wonderfully such things as gardens, interiors, meals and works of art. She's also great - without being pedantic - on social history, telling many a moving story, among which I particularly liked the one about Brian, a working-class Northern boy who in the 1960s (there's quite a lot of flashbacks from the 1980s in the book), via a brief grounding in the army and night classes, gets to university and becomes a novelist and a teacher of English, and marries Alix.

Against this brilliantly painted background the three women's lives develop in unexpected ways.... Read more ›
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Nostalgic State of the Nation in 1980s 1 Nov 2010
By Margaret E. Anderson
Format:Paperback
For middle aged ladies an appropriate journey through our youth. Serious analysis of life in the 1980s with understanding insight into women's lot post the sexual revolution: women balancing careers, children, difficult marriages etc. Beautiful prose though rather tends to be indulgent- too many back stories and irrelevant details. It;s also about the nature of Evil and how to make sense of one's life. Reflective and thought provoking.
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2 of 13 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing 5 Mar 2000
By L. Vince
Format:Paperback
I had to read this book for a literature class..I found the characters extremely boring and sometimes annoying...Its a shame that some of the characters she does mention, like Liz's children aren't a bit more developed. All in all a very boring book...
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