A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman: Book summary and reviews of A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman by Margaret Drabble

A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman Summary

Margaret Drabble's novels have illuminated the past fifty years, especially the changing lives of women, like no others. Yet her short fiction has its own unique brilliance. Her penetrating evocations of character and place, her wide-ranging curiosity, her sense of irony - all are on display here, in stories that explore marriage, female friendships, the English tourist abroad, love affairs with houses, peace demonstrations, gin and tonics, cultural TV programs; in stories that are perceptive, sharp, and funny.

An introduction by the Spanish academic José Fernández places the stories in the context of her life and her novels. This collection is a wonderful recapitulation of a masterly career.

A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman Reviews

"Starred Review. Readers will enjoy following the leitmotifs of Drabble's worlds while also recognizing the evolution of her craft and the choices or her heroines.... Often complex, usually unsettled, these women defy compartmentalization." - Publishers Weekly

"Starred Review. How profoundly Drabble understands pain and stoicism. She also has a mythic feel for landscape and the awe nature inspires, thus anchoring her masterfully drawn characters and their provocative dilemmas to the larger, living world in stories as piercing as they are dazzling." - Booklist

"These sharp and poignant stories will have broad appeal but will be especially nostalgic for readers who came of age in the heady dawn of feminism and who cut their literary teeth on the likes of Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, and Drabble herself." - Library Journal

"Smooth, reflective prose... Drabble's fans will savor these bite-sized examples of her humane intelligence." - Kirkus Reviews

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Margaret Drabble Author Biography

Margaret Drabble was born in 1939 in Sheffield, England. Her father was a barrister, county court judge and a novelist. Her sister is the author A.S. Byatt. Margaret attended the Mount School in York from where she won a scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge to read English. She received a Starred First (First Class Honours with Distinction - which is rarely awarded). After graduating from Cambridge she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford where she understudied for Vanessa Redgrave.

She is the author of over 25 works of fiction, nonfiction, and biography. You may view a detailed bibliography here.

She married the actor Clive Swift (perhaps best known for his role as husband to Hyacinth Bucket in the British comedy...

... Full Biography

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