i haven't read this book, but I felt inclined to give it a high rating anyway and pretend I had . Reason being, I've read a lot of Drabble's other work and it's all excellent. She is very good at looking at the inner lives of damaged women, looking at women's spirituality without once mentioning any odf the red flkags that would take her books off the literature shelves and put them on the new-age shelves. this book's back cover says that it covers the reunion of a psychotherapist with a complicated family with her friends, a teacher to young criminals and a defiantly single art critic. Plenty of room there, I would have thought, for Drabble's style of evocative writing. But be warned, anyone who thinks all books should be event-driven - most of drabble's work is what the movie industry would call "slow-moving". To me, fast-moving misses subtleties, and drabble misses nothing.

Enjoy.

RELEASE NOTES:

My time is probably inaccurate - as soon as I can, I will buy sealable plastic bags to waterproof thiws book, and I'll do a Skyring and release it into the tidal flow of Tuggerah Lake, right at The Entrance's mouth. depending omn the tide, it should go up int othe lakes suystem to be found in any of a number of towns, or out to see, to be read by literate whales.