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

[frustratedacademic]

Come and join the chat from over on the "Rather Dated" books thread (📚
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/whatweree_reading/4624300-the-mumsnet-rather-dated-book-group-all-welcome-to-join📚), where we established that there's a thirst for reading books by women from the past 50 years or so that are too frequently written off as dated.

December's choice is Margaret Drabble's first novel, A Summer Bird-Cage. Feel free to jot your thoughts down here at any point this month.

Spoilers allowed, but not on the main thread please.

Thank you for starting this thread frustratedacademic. I'll start reading A Summer Bird Cage next week. * *

Yes thanks for starting the new thread @frustratedacademic. I'm looking forward to the MD book and subsequent chat.

Marking place!

Thanks for starting the thread frustratedacademic. I’ve finished the book (had it out from the library as an ebook and had to read quickly as the loan was due to expire) but I’ll wait for a few opinions before I offer mine!

I’m on chapter 7. I haven’t read it since I was a teenager, it’s lovely to read it again.

This is one of my all time favourite books, will definitely pop over thanks.

What a treat this book is going to be!

Here are my thoughts on A Summer Bird-Cage. I was reflecting on the reason we chose this thread of so-called "dated" books, as it helped me shape my own responses to the book beyond lit crit (not that I know how)... Is it dated, I ponder? Obviously the details of life at the time make it seem much farther in the past than its setting, early 1960s. I find it incredible to think, for example, that my own university experience was only a couple of decades later. In that sense, it seems like a different era, not only for the small details of what people ate, but also in the narrow horizons of the two sisters post good (or very good) degrees from Oxford. Yet in many other ways it felt very similar to my own experiences in the 1980s: first flat share, staggering home late at night with a (thankfully) decent guy in the fortuitous possession of a car. Indeed, the whole storyline of the male friend who clearly would like to have a romance, but the woman seeing him as just a mate resonated immensely (to my chagrin: I was never very good at reading signals).

But this post is not giving due credit to the book's gorgeous writing - that first chapter "The Crossing" - describing the journey home, was like a short story in its own right, condensing a large amount of information about the two sisters in a few tightly worded pages. And, if I may, back to period detail, so much fun to be had in reading about Paris as it was then in contrast with my own recent trip to the city. I'd forgotten how much the contrasts between the two cultures were more heightened in the past.

And lastly, if you've lasted this long, to the central story of the book, and the two sisters' two life choices: early marriage and wealth vs. early (not yet started) career, without the wealth, but with freedom to pick one's way through early adult life. I know which choice I'd prefer, and looking at the poem from which the book's title is taken, I believe I know which choice Drabble would have us prefer too.

‘"Tis just like a summer bird-cage in a garden: the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds within despair and are in a consumption for fear they shall never get out." [John Webster, The White Devil, 1612]

F

Is that a place-marker, @Howeverdoyouneedme or a comment on my verbosity

I'm just dropping by to say I'm half way through the book :)

Oh sorry! A place marker!

I thought as much, but either way, we got the thread a bit of an airing for two minutes .

I'm making good progress and enjoying it, especially the dated references!

Love your assessment @frustratedacademic

I am under half way through. I also loved The Crossing episode. I find her writing very evocative of that time.

Thanks @DorritLittle, I look forward to reading your thoughts too!

I have been musing over the choices I made inadvertently in my 20s recently, and so this book has really struck a chord with me.

The writing draws very vivid portraits of places; Louise’s flat for example to me is a quintessential ‘magazine’ house, against the post-student grittiness of her sister’s. Theatre seemed to be an undertone for me. John is obviously an actor, but everyone has ended up playing a part. How consciously did people decide to be intellectuals or beatniks etc? Was there more compulsion to align oneself with a specific way of life when the book was written, rather than just live?

I was puzzled by the mention of black stockings being unusual, in the strange scene with the little child. Would everyone have work flesh colours then?

I enjoyed the book on the whole, and wonder if Francis will ever happen for our narrator.

The episode with the bare legs and the little child was strange and rather jarring. I'm not sure what the point of it was. Was it physical contact with another person, albeit a very strange and inappropriate one?

I felt that loneliness was the overriding emotion in the book, for Sarah especially and for Louise, although she was an enigmatic character until the last chapters. I also felt that I didn't know Sarah very well, even though she was the narrator. She seemed mysterious to me as though she was holding something back. I wondered what was the story with Francis.

I enjoyed your comments, frustratedacademic and Solasmum and agree with what you said.

Whoever suggested this one, thank you! Was a delight to re read after nearly 40 years. I was surprised by how much I remembered… not the plot so much (not much happens, after all) but little phrases or observations: buying English chocolate on the way back across the channel, and French on the way out, Daphne having to put things on rather than take them off to look better, Louise spoiling the effect of her pale make up with dramatic lipstick. Lots more, that I’d remembered for years. In terms of being rather dated, I think the whole concept of the book was based on looking at the options available to educated young women at the time, and like a previous poster said, it is worlds away from my own experience as a new graduate only twenty years later. Awful marriage to rich unlikeable man (Louise) drab and comfortless flat sharing and pointless job (Sarah) earnest political activism (?Stephanie), wandering round Europe looking at art by yourself (Simone) … none of the options sound much fun. I am not sure that young graduate women today experience the need to choose a life pathway in quite the same stark way that Sarah does in the book.
I read somewhere that Margaret Drabble regretted how much emphasis she put on clothes and appearance in the book, which is probably due to the fact that she was a young writer writing about young women, and I have to say I like this book and her other early novels much more than her later ones. The other dated thing, which made me smile, was when Sarah said that she hoped they never build a tunnel under the channel because she likes the ferry so much.
All in all, I loved it! Going to track down a copy of The Garrick year now.

I'm so glad people are liking this book! As for the black stockings, is it that a child wouldn't be used to seeing anything but flesh-coloured stockings in those days? They'd be considered quite daring, I think.

Yes, the black stockings! I was wondering about that too. It seems rather austere to me. Maybe I'm thinking of a nun's habit? I suppose it's daring because wearing black rather than flesh-coloured went against the norm?

Yes, I enjoyed reading Bird-Cage and I am loving all the books I've read so far in the 'rather dated' genre (I'm not sure it is a genre, but I'm calling it one!). The glimpse into the near past is fascinating. How people lived, the minutiae of their everyday lives, what motivated their choices in life. Yet the universal truths don't change; family ties, friendship, love and belonging.

I loved this book when I read it as a teenager in the late '80s and it's in my stash of faded Penguins, if you know what I mean.

Not sure I'll re-read in time to contribute, but place marking in case.

Thank you for the piece from the Webster poem, @frustratedacademic

Not that I'm in charge (though I started the thread ), but please contribute whenever you're ready @largeprintagathachristie, I for one will be checking back here as long as the thread isn't full.

I finished reading this yesterday and really enjoyed it. The relationship between the sisters resonated and rang very true (there 10 years between me and my sister so we actually know quite little about each others inner lives and I'm often seen as the cold older one)

Of course had Louise and Sarah been born in different times they would have more options to them (although the option of living in central London would be more unlikely) but really alot of people leave education and just kind of travel and drift around in whatever jobs so Sarah is on a well trodden path.

I found it interesting how Louise had visited her friend with the baby and was horrified at that life and wanted to do anything to avoid that for herself. The other baby they met in the theatre was introduced by John who unused they see him - I wonder if that was a reason she didn't want to marry John, she knew he wanted children?