Aging, Longing, and Loving in the Upper-Middle Class - Rated 
For some reason I seem lately to have been reading several novels about aging, depressed, and lonely academics or members of the media or arts community--E.g. Shroud, by Banville; Amsterdam by McEwan, and A Foreign Affair by Lurie, among others. The Sea Lady is another and one of the best of this flourishing genre. As in The Sea Lady the protagonists seem always to be highly successful (unlike most of us real aging academics reading or writing amazon reviews), very depressed about their miserable lives (but it's not always clear why and sometimes seems self-indulgent), are divorced or in any case alone and lonely (but many of us real retired academics are still married, with rafts of grand children), and are almost obsessively self-involved (aren't we all? Or perhaps I should just speak for myself here).
The Sea Lady is the compressed life story of several children who meet one or two summers shortly after World War II on the seashore of England near the border with Scotland on the North Sea. Two, Ailsa and Humphrey, meet later in life, fall in love and marry, divorce, etc. Then meet again in their sixties, etc., etc. All the children turn out to be famous or wealthy as adults; all are successful, miserable, lonely, aging or aged now in 2006 (the story is told seamlessly with flashbacks). Drabble is a fine writer with a sensitive simple style that is very similar to Ian McEwan's but without the twisted, dark tones of McEwan. Although nothing happens in the novel, there is no violence, little lurid sex, or anything else of moment, I found it gripping and enjoyable. This is life, a mirror for us aging academics. Even if we're not successful or miserable and lonely there is much in this novel that illuminates and perhaps quiets our own demons.
Some of the things I very much liked about The Sea Lady: Drabble manages to weave a lot of trivia about life in England since WW II into her narrative. This novel evoked England for me better than many others that I've read lately (I'm a confirmed anglophile--I live in New York). Also Drabble uses quotes and snippets from Shakespeare in a creative and charming way that enhances the story. (I'm also a life-long Shakespeare fan.)
I must say that I am amazed by Drabble's talent. I wonder how she can breathe such life, such intensity into her story and characters. I admire and wonder at this talent, this genius. As with other fine writers, I wonder how they can know so much, sense so many things and get them on the page and make them live off the page. This is the first of Drabble's novels that I have read and I came upon it by accident, but I plan to read more of her works. Congratulations!
Disappointed - Rated 
I have been a great fan of Margaret Drabble for many years and have read all her other books. I could not wait to read this one. It has proved a huge disappointment; I found it slow and rather turgid . The past was indeed beautifully evoked but it did not seem to ground the intense connections which brought the characters together in the future - rather I was left puzzled as to their emotional motivations. A lovely idea but maybe did not come out in the execution.
Congratulations if you were able to get involved in this book! - Rated 
I usually enjoy Margaret Drabble's books, but this I found by turns heavy going because of the over-mannered style and irritating because of factual errors in everything from the private lives of fish to the names of railway companies! Yes,it does matter - it interrupts any flow in the text and any hope of conjuring up the characters. Disappointing.
A wonderful evocation of childhood - Rated 
Humphrey Clark and Ailsa Kelman met briefly as children in north-east England. They later meet up as lovers and embark on a short unfortunate marriage. Both have gone on to eke out very different careers. Ailsa has made a name for herself through her academic work on feminism and then through media appearances. She scandalized people by putatively wearing a foetus as a pendant. Humphrey has had a fairly successful career as a marine biologist albeit not without disappointments. At the Green Grotto (in the white elephant at Greenwich) which he had a part in setting up is a robotic mermaid who moves in and out of the water. His embarrassment at this as he escorts his grandson is almost tangible.
Their stories unfold as they travel back to Ornemouth fifty years later to receive honorary doctorates at one of the country's newer universities.
The book is a wonderful evocation of childhood at the seaside as well as the anxieties and uncertainties of ageing. There are constant references to sea life and marine biology (Ailsa's name, her mermaid-like dress, their journey compared to salmon coming home to spawn)
A grown-up book for grown-ups!
A fishy tale from the author of The Ice Age and The Gates Of Ivory - Rated
Margaret Drabble's latest novel chronicles a journey - or rather two journeys which are set to converge, with surprising results. Briefly and unsuccessfully married thirty years before, ageing experts Ailsa Kelman and Humphrey Clark are making separate trips north to a provincial town where they are both to receive honorary degrees. Although they appear to come from quite different worlds - Ailsa the wildly controversial academic and feminist pundit, Humphrey the quietly distinguished marine biologist - they once shared an emotional language which both have now almost forgotten how to speak.
As they make their separate pilgrimages towards the scene of a first idyllic childhood summer, Drabble takes us back through time to revisit each reminiscence and regret, chronicling the progress of the couple's strangely unfulfilled relationship. She is excellent when evoking memory, and every detail - from the "tarry masculine seafaring smell of creosote" to the "heathery blend of colours" on a tweedy aunt's sensible suit - evokes a vanished English world with aching veracity.
Drabble links personality with myth throughout the novel, in almost overwhelming fashion. Sea Lady Ailsa, named after an island in the Firth of Clyde, is first revealed dressed in "silver sequinned scales", and the ageing Humphrey recalls how salmon return to the spawning grounds - "the source" - at the end of their lives. Ailsa's life has been glamorous but ultimately lonely, like that of the animatronic mermaid Humphrey watches mechanically circling a grotto pool in a civic aquarium. There's a lot of Hans Christian Anderson's "Little Mermaid" in Ailsa; despite her strident feminism and varied career, and although she has long since given up the "high knife heels" she once wore, there is still a sense that she is a fish out of water, a beached and crippled mermaid looking for her destiny in an indifferent world.
Humphrey is also a disappointed man, forced to forgo fame by his refusal to compete for funding and recognition at the expense of serious science. The Green Grotto, home of the robotic mermaid, is the all too tangible symbol of his failure; conceived as a research establishment and teaching facility, it's become no more than an expensive tourist sideshow. It's also a fairly obvious sideswipe at the dumbing down of modern science teaching and the great White Elephant of Greenwich.
The slow convergence of these disparate lovers is controlled and overseen by the mysterious "Public Orator", a metafictional narrative device which seems unsatisfactory for most of the novel's length. He makes sense only at the novel's denouement, once he is able to step into the action - though he remains a shadowy and somewhat insubstantial figure to the end. Much more satisfying is the sense we have (the novel is subtitled A Late Romance) that in returning to the source, perhaps the Sea Lady might be about to find her true element at last.
first published at subba-cultcha.com
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