The middle ground

A “marvelous” novel about a woman’s psychological battle with the realities of midlife (The New York Times Book Review). Witty and endearingly neurotic, Kate Armstrong has hit a certain age—and the crisis that goes along with it. She has a career as a successful journalist, specializing in feminist issues, but she struggles to challenge herself at work. She’s a mother, but her children have all left the nest, and her marriage has ended in divorce. She has a lively circle of friends, but her relationships with them are complicated by years of history and failed affairs. She’s left one stage of life behind and has another stage ahead of her, but right now she’s stuck somewhere in the middle. With her “unfailing insight and intelligence,” Margaret Drabble shows us a woman alone in London for the first time in years—slowly rediscovering herself in a city on the brink of great change (The New York Times).