In a “profoundly moving, intellectually acute” novel (Philadelphia Inquirer) that is “as meticulous as Jane Austen, as deadly as Evelyn Waugh” (Los Angeles Times), Margaret Drabble conjures up a retired writer besieged by her three grasping children in this dazzling, wickedly gothic tale. 

          Margaret Drabble began to write when she was an unemployed actress in England; her stories about independent, Austen-esque heroines are dramatic, but carry the intellectual weight of Drabble’s own narrative inventiveness and incisive social commentary.