The dark flood rises
Francesca Stubbs has an extremely full life. A highly regarded expert on housing for the elderly who is herself getting on in age, she drives "restlessly round England," which is "her last love . . . She wants to see it all before she dies." Amid the professional conferences that dominate her schedu...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York, NY :
Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
2017.
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| Edition: | First American edition. |
| Subjects: | |
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| Summary: | Francesca Stubbs has an extremely full life. A highly regarded expert on housing for the elderly who is herself getting on in age, she drives "restlessly round England," which is "her last love . . . She wants to see it all before she dies." Amid the professional conferences that dominate her schedule, she fits in visits to old friends, brings home cooked dinners to her ailing ex-husband, texts her son, who is grieving over the shocking death of his girlfriend, and drops in on her daughter, a quirky young woman who lives in a flood plain in the West Country. Fran cannot help but think of her mortality, but she is "not ready to settle yet, with a cat upon her knee." She still prizes her "frisson of autonomy," her belief in herself as a dynamic individual doing meaningful work in the world. The Dark Flood Rises moves between Fran's interconnected group of family and friends in England and a seemingly idyllic expat community in the Canary Islands. In both places, disaster looms. In Britain, the flood tides are rising, and in the Canaries, there is always the potential for a seismic event. As well, migrants are fleeing an increasingly war-torn Middle East. Though The Dark Flood Rises delivers the pleasures of a traditional novel, it is clearly situated in the precarious present. Margaret Drabble's latest enthralls, entertains, and asks existential questions in equal measure. Alas, there is undeniable truth in Fran's insight: "Old age, it's a fucking disaster!" |
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| Item Description: | "A novel"--Dust jacket. "Originally published in 2016 by Canongate Books Ltd., Great Britain"--Title page verso. |
| Physical Description: | 327 pages ; 24 cm |
| ISBN: | 9780374134952 0374134952 |
| Author Notes: | She is a novelist, critic, and the editor of the fifth edition of The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Her works include A Summer Bird Cage; The Millstone, which won the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize in 1966; Jerusalem the Golden, which won James Tait Black Prize in 1967; and The Witch of Exmoor. She also received the E. M. Forster award and was awarded a Society of Authors Travelling Fellowship in the 1960s and the Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1980. (Bowker Author Biography) |
