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Sunday 22 March 2020

Comments about the book: A Summer Bird-Cage by Margaret Drabble






Hello everyone,    Here are the comments on the book we have read this month.    In principle you can make observations or remarks at the bottom of this blog post.  Some of you who don't know of our writing blog may like to scroll down and check out our stories that we've been compiling for some time now.   The blog was first started in 2011 for me personally so please excuse any personal stuff in previous posts.
Please enjoy a piece of this virtual mocha and hazelnut cake and a cup of tea.  Scroll down on the right to see the recipe.     Bon appetit and happy reading !!

 


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Comments sent in by Geraldine Chabrier


In the middle of the book, I investigated to find out when it had been written, for I had undergone   , myself, some of the expectations for a women’s behavior in the « bourgeois » environment  in the past.  So, in 1963, I was 18 and we were to have women’s lib with oral contraception and the earthquake that went with it.

So, it gave me to think of the difference between these two sisters, with them comparing their ways of living, their relationship to men, their vision of their women friends and their seek for freedom : Louise trying to solve the problem by marrying a rich man and finding out that it was somehow impossible.  Sarah trying to live a free life, but with a constant eye on her sister’s  choices and behavior…

And finding out that within the 10 following years, things had change so much for us women.

I remember my father hoping I would marry a doctor or a lawyer, which would keep me safe with money and…. Keep me at the « bourgeois » level he was from !  But the change occurred at this time which was lucky.

 And so, I continued reading the book with this in sight : because at the beginning, I couldn’t help but feel  irritated at the futile lives and thoughts of these people : I’m I dressed OK for the occasion, how do people look at me ?  how am I supposed to relate to them ? Am I taking the right drink ?  What do I achieve by traveling to Rome or Paris ?  Everybody just seemed to be looking at themselves and only themselves and the relation to the others  or the outside world seemed missing or superficial.

And so, the last Chapter, « The Collision » is one of the most interesting confrontation between 2 worlds that I have ever read.  It talks about real relations, how the two sisters drop the mask, solidarity,  decision (Louise’s to drop Stephen), outlook on maternity, what it means to be a woman.

I like the construction of the book, the way it brings one slowly to the conclusion and it rings a bell as woman are, to-day- hoping for more freedom , self-construction and equality (i.e. the outcome of Weinstein and other men’s regard towards women that is going to have to change again and this has already started.)

So, I liked the modernity of the book, the way it was constructed, the writing itself and the way it made me think… and also the lightness of some scenes that also made me laugh, which is a good thing !
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Annemarie's comments
Loved the actual writing and wonderful descriptions of clothes which took you right back to the times. It is not surprising Drabble and her sister, A.S. Byatt fell out with each other. There seems to be a lot of autobiographical  detail and the sister is not depicted as very likeable. Although there is very little plot the characters are well-described and the story remains intriguing.  I don't think I actually enjoyed it and there was a little part of me comparing it to modern day Facebook, selfies etc with so much egoistical detail - words do work better for me than endless selfies!
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Comments by Dawn

Hello everyone and hope you are all well.  I think I’ve read ‘Jerusalem The Golden’ also by Margaret Drabble and think I have a copy but can’t find it.  It’s not a book that I remember well except that it was associated with feminism. 

I think Drabble was an important writer of her time but I’m not sure her books will be read by many in years to come.  She’ll maybe be remembered as a window into the world of women in the swinging 60s and later.  A Summer Bird-Cage is her first novel so can be forgiven for not being perfect.  

I felt I really didn’t care much one way or another about either of the sisters and their lives - it seems to be a bit autobiographical as Drabble and her sister are said to have not gone on very well.  Drabble was a wealthy middle-class woman with everything on her side - parents, connections, education.  I was never interested in clothes, makeup, gossip or nights out - I was brought up on a farm where there wasn’t time for such things. 

I think of the same period I like the novels of Margaret Foster who was a year older than Drabble are much better.  Her father was a fitter in a factory and her mother a housewife.  She was brought up on a council estate.

Foster had nothing handed to her on a plate and wrote books like ‘Georgy Girl’ about a life which seems much more solid and important.  Foster had a gift, an ability to take ordinary lives and transform them into fiction of the highest order. I think, of the period, she was a far better writer. 

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Jackie's thoughts



I found this book to be so frivolous, superficial and shallow that I didn’t read all of it.   For the first few chapters  I was so bored by the descriptions of socialites their lives and conversations, what they choose to wear and all the little chit chatty that I skipped quite a lot until I got to page 210 where Louise admits she married Stephan Halifax for money (which I could of told you in the first chapter)   She wanted to be safe financially which I can understand but I have no respect for someone (even a character in a book) who can marry someone just for the prestige and money.   It didn't seem to go anywhere.  No plot.
… no I didn’t enjoy it at all found it old fashioned and extremely tedious and certainly won’t encourage me to read any of her other books although saying that if someone recommends one that is a little more umpy then I'm game.     

I suggest we read:   The Plague by Albert Camus as our next book … but just my suggestion.   

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Lucy's comments


Ms. Drabble has great prose, I really got excited with the beginning of my read, wow I thought, she has a lovely “way with words”! But after a while I got bogged down with the plot (or lack thereof), and with the characters either gossiping or preening.
            The jealousy issue seems to be the most evident theme and colors the path taken by the narrator. Not having had siblings, I found this all a bit trivial and not worth the fuss? But then again I was an “only child” and didn’t experience this kind of tension so this left me in the cold.
            Both characters were I presume purposefully made to be over self-involved, paralyzed in their present situations, their next move on Life, or mulling constantly over missteps taken in their pasts, not really interesting to me. My worst enjoyment was reading chapter  9 when Wilfred (what a snarky man) gives Sarah the lowdown on and on about Louise’s affair was so irritating, I was rolling my eyes, not worth the long chapter in such a short book. I found all this quite shallow…
            The best that I liked were the first couple of chapters where I loved her writing style and the ending about the shower cap and Louise’s inability to think past her ludicrous appearance, so revealing! The last sentence in the book is so clever, a most original ending of any book I have read!
            Altogether I liked her style of writing a lot and would read what you all consider her best work, please suggest one for me.
           
This one was pretty good for a first novel by a young woman in times when educated women had difficulties with their identities and futures (Hmmm maybe many still don’t…).
I would give it 🍷🍷
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Notes from Paula


I liked the book. In fact, I liked it enough to be reading it a second time right now, underlining sentences and phrases that delight me. For example: “Girls shouldn’t share flats, but who else can they share them with? … The whole of the next month went on in the same way, cluttered up with intractable material objects like dirty saucepans and shoes that needed new heels…” and “The days pass, which is the most I could expect of them…” and “’She even comes into my bedroom,’ said Louise, in tones of such disdain that she might have been talking about an earwig, not a first cousin.”

I find her use of language, the way she strings words together, quite charming and smart. This kind of writing can make me laugh out loud, which I did often while reading “A Summer Bird-Cage.”

The book’s plot is wickedly clever, and being a “little sister,” I can relate to many of her characterizations. I find in Louise a bit of both of my older sisters, without the imperiousness, and of course, she was no doubt created as an amalgram of Margaret Drabble’s own older sister. A friend was over one evening – before the lockdown – and she said, “Oh, Margaret Drabble. Isn’t her sister the famous novelist X?” She couldn’t think of the name, so as soon as she was gone, I googled Drabble, and sure enough, her sister is the novelist A.S. Byatt. And their real-life sisterly feud is apparently quite infamous, their unrelenting competition as writers, and their shared distaste for their domineering mother. Apparently, they haven’t spoken in years, one reason being the way Drabble writes about “older sisters.” I found this highly amusing and sad, at the same time.

I also liked the organization of the book, the simple way chapters were organized and titled, to move the reader through the book in a completely linear fashion. Often when such a short book begins in the middle of the characters’ stories, it can be hard to follow, but her beginning, when Sarah is heading home from Paris for Louise’s wedding, introduces the main characters succinctly yet with depth.
The final chapter, “The Collision,” is, of course, the inevitable collision that Louise’s duplicitous life was heading toward, but it’s also a collision of the two sisters, their coming together, finally, in a collision of support and their own kind of love. A very satisfying conclusion, indeed. (Although I so did want to meet Francis!) And the last line of the book just might be one of my favorite last lines in fiction.

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Comments from Mary
Enjoyable?

Yes.

It was not cruel, but see below.

What about the literary style

Clever and sometimes complex.

Longish paragraphs and some sentences needed rereading to follow them (or perhaps I should not be reading late at night!). It was a mixture of chattiness, stream of consciousness narrative and brief interludes of dialogue. Drabble was trying out different modes?

Several key words

Sardonic, witty, introspective

The 60’s

Yes, it caught the feel of the early 60’s when for women, education, career, marriage were breaking away from the post-war.

Social setting

Jilly Cooper meets academe but with a heavy dose of irony.

Characterisation

Thin in places but it is a slim novel.

Was it a pastiche or do people really have the luxury of time for all that probing of self and others in their early 20’s? The reference to the friend in Streatham beset by mortgage and babies and the reaction of and high opinions of themselves held by Louise and Sarah suggest that this was Drabble being very disparaging about said luxury.

The trajectory of the story

Sarah drew the reader in as a confidante to the tale that she was narrating - it was a knowing book. It held my attention, pulling me on to its satisfying, rather graceful, ending.

The story

All about Louise. Or Sarah? Hmm.

The relationship clearly drew on Drabble’s relationship with her sister. Personally, it was so recognisable for me (the relationship with one of my sisters and including the bridesmaid dress required to be worn when I was 16, plumb in the middle of the 60’s).

The mother/daughter relationship described in the book was odd, but probably typical of many. Very different from those in the Joy Luck Club!

Sarah’s thoughts about career etc. must have been influenced by the lost career of Drabble’s mother, who was herself a scholar but was trapped by motherhood, Sheffield and her job as a teacher.

Anything else

Perhaps we should have read A S Byatt’s first novel alongside… but I guess that many a thesis has been written on that already.

Mary

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 Comments from Alison

When I suggested this book, I remembered reading it years ago and being delighted to find it again.  I think that I must have read it soon after it was first published and it does carry themes that would have seemed of critical importance then. 

Re-reading it now, I felt that it was somewhat dated.  The feminist question of what intelligent and educated women should do with their lives is something about which we have all made the best choices we found possible.  I can see from my own daughters lives that much has changed since those heady days of the sixties.

What really had interested me, even at the time, was Louise's attitude to money.  I remember her saying something to the effect that it was pointless to marry for money as you would always want more than you had.  For example, she said, if you could buy a gown by a famous designer, you would then want one specifically created for you.  In other words, someone else would always have more and you would never be satisfied.  I have read the book through twice and cannot find this passage in it, so perhaps I am wrong.  But I notice that I have a US publication here and wonder if the UK editions could be different.  Please do let me know if you have seen this passage or something like it.

Anyway, I hope that some of you enjoyed the book.  My own life, a few years later, of university and London was not a million miles from the novel.  It made me homesick now for a world when we could mix and talk freely; it will be good to have cakes and tea again!


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Monica's thoughts

I didn't actually really enjoy this book .    In fact, if I am really honest,  I found it a little boring.    I feel guilty saying this as I think it is a piece of English literature to be revered but sorry I didn't.    Perhaps because I am an only child felt the whole story was around two sisters who didn't seem to be able to cope with real life.
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