The Needle's Eye (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Drabble, Margaret

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141197285 ISBN 13: 9780141197289

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2011

Synopsis

Simon Camish is an embittered, timid barrister, too busy with his own problems to take note of Rose Vassiliou across a dinner party table. But only a few years before, Rose had frequently been in the news, an heiress who turned her back on family money in the name of independence. Now she is a single parent in a decaying house, trying to raise her three children while her ex-husband takes legal action against her. When Simon finds himself drawn into her affairs, he will discover - despite what Rose may wish - that the power of money is ultimately inescapable.

About this title

Review:

Margaret Drabble's "The Needle's Eye" is an extraordinary work: It not only tells a story deftly, beautifully, with a management of past and present (and future) action that demonstrates Miss Drabble's total mastery of the mysterious form of the novel, but it succeeds in so re-creating the experiences of her characters that we soon forget they are fictional beings (perhaps they are not. . . ?) and we become them, we are transformed into them, so that by the end of the novel we have lived, through them, a very real, human and yet extraordinary experience. (Joyce Carol Oates)

An extraordinary work: it tells a story deftly, beautifully (Joyce Carol Oates)

From the Back Cover:

Simon Camish, an embittered, diffident lawyer in a loveless marriage, would not have particularly noticed Rose Vassiliou had he not been asked to drive her home one night after a dinner party. Yet at one time she had been notorious-her name constantly in the news.
Now, separated from her Greek husband, she lives alone with her three children. Despite all the efforts and sneers of her friends, she refuses to move from her slum house in a decaying neighborhood to which she has become attached.
Gradually, Simon becomes aware that Rose is a woman of remarkable integrity and courage. He is drawn into her affairs when her husband takes legal action to re-open the question of custody of the children-a scheme for getting his wife back. And, while the precise nature of their ties eludes him, Simon comes to realize that Rose and her Greek ex-husband are forever and inextricably bound to each other.
Margaret Drabble is the author of The Red Queen, The Seven Sisters, The Peppered Moth, The Witch of Exmoor, The Millstone, and The Ice Age. She is also the editor of The Oxford Companion to English Literature.
"The Needle's Eye is that rare thing, a book one wishes were longer than it is." -- The New York Review of Books

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0141197285
• ISBN 13: 9780141197289
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416