Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
October 2013
On Sale: October 1, 2013
305 pages ISBN: 0544158903 EAN: 9780544158900 Kindle: B00E78IEBS Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
Jessica Speight, a young anthropology student in 1960s London, is at the beginning of a promising academic career when an affair with her married professor turns her into a single mother. Anna is a pure gold baby with a delightful sunny nature. But as it becomes clear that Anna will not be a normal child, the book circles questions of responsibility, potential, even age, with Margaret Drabbleβs characteristic intelligence, sympathy, and wit.
Drabble once wrote, βFamily life itself, that safest, most traditional, most approved of female choices, is not a sanctuary; it is, perpetually, a dangerous place.β Told from the point of view of the group of mothers who surround Jess, The Pure Gold Baby is a brilliant, prismatic novel that takes us into that place with satiric verve, trenchant commentary, and a movingly intimate story of the unexpected transformations at the heart of motherhood.
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