"Rather Dated" December: Margaret Drabble, A Summer Bird-Cage 📚

I’m a bit late to the discussion but I just finished this. It was a strange one for me as I hadn’t read it before and couldn’t really identify with the characters. For some reason they seemed more distant and different than in many books that I have read set much earlier. Perhaps it is the Oxbridge thing. But not just that. The whole attitude towards relationships seemed so alien to me. Her "fiance" was distant both geographically and emotionally and yet, this didn’t seem to matter to either of them. Moving on to The Beautiful Visit which so far I am enjoying much more.

I really enjoyed your post, because A Summer Bird Cage was one of my favourite books when I was younger, and I've read it many many times. The bits you mentioned are all things that have stayed with me too. There's a whole load of other things as well, like the friend whose marriage breaks up and has the miserable abortion experience, and the way Sarah's boyfriend apparently tells her her nipples are like jelly babies, the fact that Louise's husband is so wealthy she is able to keep her cosmetics in nameless jars, the au pair who cries near the beginning, the way that Sarah gets her bottom pinched on the Metro in France. Also Louise telling Sarah the story about the steeple at Chesterfield (have I remembered that right?) which is twisted because it turned around to see a virgin getting married in the church, and would turn around again if it ever saw another one. There's a bit where she talks about "taking" a job at the BBC because she can't think of anything else to do, as if this was the easiest thing in the world rather than something most of us would strive for and probably never attain. So many memorable little details. She builds up such a vivid picture of a particular time and place. I was a teenager when I first read it, and it felt so exotic to me, as someone who came from a lower social class and was timid and unglamorous. (And still am!)

I never read it before so I'm quite objective about it. I could see how it would resonate differently for people who read it at a younger age who were at a similar stage in their lives as Sarah. The opening chapter reminded me of coming home from France after my Erasmus year and settling back into the family home. I also found it claustrophobic!

@Terpsichore - I agree. I read it in my late teens , while at Cambridge and it really resonated with me, I gave it to friend at the time who commented on how dislikeable Sarah was and I remember being retaken aback as I identify with her so strongly. The bit about going home and it being lovely and comforting for the first day and then hugely claustrophobic.

They are awful about Daphne. I will post more when I’ve completely finished. If I don’t write it down as soon as I’ve read it, I can’t remember it!

It is interesting! Maybe it’s one of those books that retains a sort of talismanic importance for people because they read it at a significant moment in their lives? Just at a rough guess, I’d say far more people said they’d already read this and had fond memories of it than had read The Road to Lichfield or Black Narcissus.

Both Sarah and Louise are appalled by Daphne and treat her with contempt. But at least Daphne has a proper job and is independent.

I think Sarah and Louise both think they are better than other people; cleverer, more sophisticated. It seems Sarah understands that about herself I think. Michael the cousin explains that what he speaks to Sarah about Louise. He calls her ‘affected’ and ‘acting as if her husband were Charles Dickens’. Louise is too attractive to work, but not clever enough to forge her own way and she’s chosen to marry someone she perceives as successful.

That is so interesting, @Terpsichore , because I did like this book more than you did by the sound of it, and I actively don’t like the later Drabble novels. I felt connected to the writing in Summer Birdcage, and I’m trying to articulate why. Maybe it’s to do with the fact that I read it when the problems of recently graduated young women were fascinating to me (because of the age I was). Certainly I know that what I saw as its sophistication deeply impressed the (very unsophisticated) teenage me, so perhaps that’s why I still find the writing very convincing, articulate and clever.

Bingo, Terpsichore. Same here.

I felt I knew Emma though, whereas I didn't know Sarah very well even at the close of the story. She was quite remote from start to finish, I thought

I think this articulates my problem with the book, IsFuzzy. I was searching for the sudden moment, phrase or whatever that would suddenly give me a real connection to the writing and make me feel invested in it, but it didn’t come. Neither Sarah nor Louise convinced me as characters off the page, so I couldn’t bring myself to care much about their individual problems or their relationship to each other.

A pity, because I’ve enjoyed later Drabble books.

I agree that Sarah isn't likeable. I like However's description 'the arrogance of intelligent youth' to describe her. I also like the comparison to Sally Rooney's books. I find that her writing is rather detached and cool and the characters in her books aren't likeable either.

Emma Bovary is a very good example of an unlikeable heroine. I felt sorry for her at the end of the book and for her family after all the trouble she caused. I felt I knew Emma though, whereas I didn't know Sarah very well even at the close of the story. She was quite remote from start to finish, I thought. I felt she didn't engage much with people around here and that she lived a lonely life.

Yes, Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary are.both good examples of where I disliked the protagonist, but loved the books, and sort of saw why they acted as they did.

I’ve read many, many, many books with unlikeable characters, and enjoyed them greatly - so it’s not primarily that, just part of the picture for me.

Multiple posts, but I agree re Sally Rooney, and also Donna Tartt re the Secret History. Which needless to say, as a classics student, I loved, but was.much more Richard than the others...

Nicked, not kicked, obviously. And bizarrely she doesn't trawl my bookcases looking for books I may have lifted from their house many years ago, unlike my dad who reclaimed a copy of the grapes of wrath I thought I had dibs on after 20 years...

When I first read it at about 17, my mum is a Drabble fan so it was on the bookcase, I kicked it to take to University as I loved it, I felt scared of the sense of entitlement, I then realised later that they were still OK people, people who carried that and it wasn't their fault. I'm now pushed to see how my 45 year old self reads it. A good Xmas break distraction, so thanks.

I’m about 2/3 of the way through and I’m really enjoying this book. I like the fact Sarah is perhaps rather unlikable-she epitomises a clever, attractive young woman who is fully aware of her surroundings and place in the world. In a way it reminded me of Sally Rooney’s writing, she’s also very good at capturing the arrogance of intelligent youth in a knowing way. I don’t think we’re meant to like or dislike the characters; they just are products of their background, class and education.

Sarah has just arrived at Louise’s house. I’ll add more after I’ve finished the book.

Thanks for your comments @Terpsichore; I think we have had a very similar response to the book. I agree about the descriptions of Daphne.

I also found all that stuff about 'predators' and 'herbivores' pretty dreadful. What a worldview - it seemed almost Darwinian, and I think quite unpleasant.

I’ve been hanging back a bit before adding my thoughts and I have to say I was quite relieved to see that MotherofPearl shared some of my reservations.

I may be coming at the book from a different angle to many of you, as I hadn’t read this before and didn’t have fond memories of it. I also didn’t go to ‘Ox’, or to Cambridge, but to a redbrick university. Perhaps for some of those reasons I found it difficult to feel sympathy with Sarah, in her enviable position of privilege - despite making some allowances for the fact that she’s a young woman with the sweeping opinions (and uncertainties) of youth. However, her casual jeering towards Daphne in particular was something I found hard to accept. I suppose it’s a slight compensation to read that Drabble later said she was very ashamed of the way she’d handled those descriptions of Daphne.

But still, I agree with @MotherofPearl that I didn’t really care about either Sarah or Louise as I found them so disagreeable.

Oh dear, that's a bit rubbish on many fronts.

Cambridge, but I'll let you off on this occasion

And I know, I could barely deal with my actual work, let alone writing a novel!

I haven't read it since I was in my twenties, but loved it then. When I was a final year student, a woman knocked on my college room door, saying she'd had that room in the seventies. Being someone who would do anything to avoid revision, I invited her in for a cup of tea and a chat. In the course of general chat about the difference between 70s and 90s student life, she told me that Margaret Drabble had written the first draft in 'our' room, and was delighted when I produced a copy from my bookcase. A fond memory