The Middle Ground is very much a novel of today. It is a celebration of the pleasures and dangers of London life in all its variety, seen through the eyes of a group of friends – Kate Armstrong, journalist, Evelyn Stennett, social worker, Ted Stennett, a doctor of sorts (and ex-lover of Kate) and Hugo Mainwaring, journalist, anthropologist and wounded adventurer. They are all in their forties – "the middle years, caught between children and parents, free of neither" – and they in turn see London (with some alarm) through the eyes of their teenage children. All are questioning their apparently successful careers, wondering what the future holds; Kate in particular is questioning her life as an independent woman.

          Margaret Drabble has retreated from the public scene of The Ice Age to pursue some of the more domestic preoccupations of her early work. The Middle Ground is a brilliant and witty novel about communication across the barriers of sex, race and age, and it ends on a note of guarded optimism.