The Pure Gold Baby: A Novel - Softcover

HMH hardcover, 2013, previous ISBN 978-0-544-15890-0

“An unexpected gift from a great author. How do we treat the child who walks among us in a different way than most? In Margaret Drabble’s hands the answer is with a depth of empathy few master.” — Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones

Jessica Speight, an anthropologist in 1960s London, is beginning a promising academic career when an affair leaves her a single mother. Anna is delightful—a pure gold baby. But as it becomes clear that Anna is not a normal child, the book circles questions of responsibility, potential, even age, with Margaret Drabble’s characteristic intelligence and wit. Told from the point of view of Jess’s fellow mothers, The Pure Gold Baby is a movingly intimate look at the unexpected transformations at the heart of motherhood.

“Meditative . . . I’m so glad that Margaret Drabble, like her characters, just decided to keep on going.” — Meg Wolitzer, NPR’s All Things Considered

“A closely observed group portrait of female friends, a patient insight into the joys and pains of motherhood, and an image of how society has changed and how it has not.” — Harper’s Magazine

Margaret Drabble is the author of The Sea Lady, The Seven Sisters, and The Peppered Moth, among other novels. She has written biographies of Arnold Bennett and Angus Wilson, and is the editor of the fifth and sixth editions of The Oxford Companion to English Literature. For her contributions to contemporary English literature, Drabble was made a Dame of the British Empire in 2008.