The Pure Gold Baby

A Novel

Margaret Drabble

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2013
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780544157767
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

An "achingly wise" novel about the challenges of motherhood: "Admirers of Marilynne Robinson will find themselves very much at home in this book" ( The Wall Street Journal).
 
Jessica Speight, an anthropologist in 1960s London, is at the beginning of a promising academic career when an affair turns her into a single mother. Baby Anna is delightful—but with time it becomes clear that she is different from other children. Told from the point of view of Jess's fellow mothers, this is a movingly intimate look at the unexpected transformations at the heart of motherhood.
 
"How do we treat the child who walks among us in a different way than most? In Margaret Drabble's hands the answer is with a depth of empathy few master." —Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones
 
"Moving and meditative . . . I found a kind of somber bravery in the story of this unwavering, intelligent woman and her guileless and beautiful child." —Meg Wolitzer, NPR's  All Things Considered
 
" The Pure Gold Baby is a closely observed group portrait of female friends, a patient insight into the joys and pains of motherhood, and an image of how society has changed and how it has not." — Harper's Magazine

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• The Pure Gold Baby
• About the Author