A Natural Curiosity - Softcover

Rich in character and incident, A Natural Curiosity sweeps the reader from smart London townhouses to a run-down embassy in the Middle East, from the splendours of the Musée d?Orsay in Paris to drowsy afternoons in the hills of sunny Italy, as we re-encounter Alix, Liz, and Esther, three erudite, middle-aged, Cambridge-educated women living in Margaret Thatcher?s Britain. The story opens in 1987, when Alix, a conscientious social worker, befriends a convicted killer, when a dazed housewife begins an affair with a stranger after her husband?s suicide, and a comfort-loving TV executive undertakes to rescue a friend who?s been kidnapped by terrorists. A Natural Curiosity is wondrous and astute, and in Margaret Drabble?s hands, the seemingly improbable becomes vividly real.

Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield in 1939 and educated at Cambridge. She was awarded a CBE in 1980. Her many novels include The Radiant Way, (1987), A Natural Curiosity, (1989), The Gates of Ivory (1991), The Peppered Moth (2000), The Seven Sisters (2002), The Red Queen (2004) and The Sea Lady (2006), all of which are published by Penguin. Margaret Drabble is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd and lives in London.