The Seven Sisters

Jul 22, 2007 SarahC rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: story about change, not taking yourself too seriously, finding who you are and liking the answer

Shelves: transcendsthegenre, feelsomething, favorites

this is my favorite Margaret Drabble book to date. For this book, I would love to meet her, buy her dinner, and tell her how in awe of her I am. It is about how to love life, literature, change, yourself. There is nothing standard about this tale -- Margaret Drabble clearly raises the bar. It is wit defined.

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Oct 28, 2012 David Franks rated it 5 of 5 stars

Why do I enjoy Margaret Drabble’s books so much? I realised one day, when I was reading a passage in one of her books, it’s partly because she’s not Jane Austen. I started off, a young man, enthralled by Jane Austen, read and re-read her books until I knew them by heart. I played the Jane Austen game with like-minded friends: what did Mr Woodhouse recommend that Mrs Bates should eat at his evening party; what did Anne Elliot and Captain Benwick discuss at the dinner at the Harville’s house at Ly...more Why do I enjoy Margaret Drabble’s books so much? I realised one day, when I was reading a passage in one of her books, it’s partly because she’s not Jane Austen. I started off, a young man, enthralled by Jane Austen, read and re-read her books until I knew them by heart. I played the Jane Austen game with like-minded friends: what did Mr Woodhouse recommend that Mrs Bates should eat at his evening party; what did Anne Elliot and Captain Benwick discuss at the dinner at the Harville’s house at Lyme Regis? But doubts creep in. Would I have liked to be married to a woman like Lizzie Bennett? She was rather conceited, not something in a woman’s character that can easily change. Then Margaret Drabble opened my eyes. In the Waterfall, she has her central character, a woman, saying “How I dislike Jane Austen. How I deplore her desperate wit. Her moral tone dismays me. Emma got what she deserved, in marrying Mr Knightley. What can it have been like, in bed with Mr Knightley? Sorrow awaited that woman: she would have done better to steal Frank Churchill, if she could.” The pseudo-closure, the false happy ending of Jane Austen, there’s nothing like that in Margaret Drabble’s novels. Jane Austen’s characters are flawed, and flawed in a way that is unconvincing. Lizzie Bennett, in Pride and Prejudice, is fundamentally a nice woman: she has to be redeemed from her savage wit by an unpleasant, proud man who turns about to be a nice man in disguise. The central characters of Drabble’s novels are often women who share the same characteristics. They are clever, intelligent, educated women, often professionals. They live in a man’s world, and they are ambivalent about their relationships with men, whether lovers or husbands or friends. They are ambivalent about their children, or the possibility of children, and they are ambivalent about themselves, and what they can achieve in life. Very often they are not really likeable, but they are real women. Drabble does not shy away from unsympathetic characters. Drabble’s novels span a lifetime, her own lifetime, starting off with her first protagonist, published in 1963, a brilliant young woman just graduated from Cambridge, as Drabble was herself, and growing older with Drabble, going through the usual histories of marital breakdown, young children, trying again.

We can start off with the joke. Candida Wilton is the central character of The Seven Sisters. Candida means white, and there is the implication of reliability, truth-telling, and that’s just about the last thing that Candida Wilton is. She is the ultimate unreliable witness.

As Drabble’s books progressed she explored more and more the way in which different points of view can tell the story and throw light on her protagonist’s character, and The Seven Sisters took this on to a new level. The first section of the novel is a diary, written in the first person, but the authorial voice begins to intrude. ‘I’m quite interested,’ she writes, ‘in the whining resentful martyred tone I seem to have adopted. … I will try to shake it off. I will try to disown it.’ And later she writes ‘I see I have mentioned Andrew three times already in this diary. I think that means I should try to give some account of him and of my marriage to him. I’m not sure I will be able to tell the truth.’ This isn’t strictly an authorial voice, but it’s an authorial slant on the first person.

The second part of the novel is written in the third person, and it portrays Candida as rather more likeable. She was rather harsh on herself in the first section. She isn’t quite as negative as she seemed to be, the story picks up, we meet some interesting characters, and the story develops.

The third part of the novel is a shock. We read that this is her daughter Ellen’s account, based on something found on Candida’s computer after her death. How did she die? We are beginning to wonder if she killed herself, and then we are told that she killed herself by drowning in the canal. Did she identify with Dido, Queen of Carthage, who killed herself, deserted by her lover Aeneas, just as Candida was deserted by her husband? This reaches near certainty with Candida’s musings about the Cumean Sybil, who tells her to be still, submit, this is the last height. But it isn’t so. It is not the last height. And she cannot submit. The third part was an exercise in self-criticism, and not very successful self-criticism either. Candida didn’t die, however. In an interview several years before she wrote Seven Sisters, she said ‘this is what we were put on earth to do, to endeavour in the face of the impossible.’ She’s the Quaker-educated child of left-wing middle-class parents with a strong social conscience. And the child of a neurotic mother.

The fourth part of the novel alternates between first person and third person, taking the story forward in a more modern way.

Some readers find this switching of points of view difficult. To me it illuminates how we understand someone, let’s call her Athene. We pick up hints from what Athene tells us herself, what other people say about her, what Athene herself says about what these other people have said, we frequently get it wrong, and we realise that Athene often does not understand herself anyway. And sometimes she is deliberately misleading. Did the Sibyls always tell the truth? We can’t know.

And what of the story? There isn’t actually much of a story, just about enough to hang the musings of Candida and her sisters on. Candida and her sisters follow the travels, and the travails, of Aeneas. The story of Aeneas is a terrible story, full of betrayal, failure and death. Why was this suffering inflicted on Aeneas and his companions? The Aeneid starts off with that question: “Tell me, Muse, how it all began. Why was Juno so outraged? Why did she force a man, so famous for his devotion, to brave such rounds of hardship, bear such trials?” And it isn’t just Aeneas who suffers. His lover Dido suffers so much that she kills herself. Everyone within Candida’s circle suffers, to some extent. Her children, and most of all, herself. Even her husband, shocked by Candida’s unexpected resilience, falters. Candida knows that this is her fault, at least in part.

A common feature of Drabble’s novels is that there is no closure, and, again, many readers find this difficult. But there isn’t closure in life. Many people who go through separation and divorce, and union with another partner learn in time that you don’t leave your problems behind, you take them with you, there’s no happy ever after. Many men move on to a new partner, to find that they’ve joined themselves to a woman who is more or less identical to the woman they left behind. There’s a rather charming touch in the fourth section when Candida is thinking about the man who has shown his interest. ‘There would have to be rules about bed,’ she thinks, harking back to ambiguities about her marital relationship with her husband. You wonder about this. Candida is no fool. She knows what her new man will want, and she’s wondering if she wants it herself, and she’s probably doubting if she does. In Jane Austen’s novel there is a false closure. Lizzie Bennett, and all the other heroines, find happiness, escaping from the cardboard villains, who turn to clever amusing, immoral women, but Jane Austen doesn’t even allow her heroines to have fun.

Drabble has come in for some very savage criticism from feminist writers for her persistence in seeing the relationship between men and women as more nuanced than some feminists maintain. ‘It’s no good blaming men for everything,’ she said in an interview. ‘Women are to blame as well. And there is something seriously wrong with the institution of marriage.’ She also persists in seeing peoples’ problems as a result of their past experience, particularly the influence of parents, rejecting the view that the problems a woman experiences are entirely due to a patriarchal society, or capitalism, or the commercial pressures to be slim, attractive, and so on. Candida is much given to musings about this.

Seven Sisters is a very literary novel. It isn’t necessary to know who the Seven Sisters are, the Pleiades, goddesses, daughters of Ajax and the sea nymph Pleione, who are proto-feminists, having affairs with many men and gods, and rejecting even Zeus’ overtures, not a wise thing even for a goddess to do, but if you do know this it enlarges understanding. At the end of the novel are the words ‘Stretch forth your hand, I say. Stretch forth your hand.’ This is Matthew, chapter 12 verse 13, Jesus healing the leper. ‘Then saith he to the man, Stretch forth thy hand. And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, as the other.’ Has Candida been healed? Candida would probably doubt that the leper had been healed. But in a sense Candida has been healed. She is reconciled to her daughters. She has begun to understand herself. At the end of part 2 there is what looks like a quotation: ‘Who is that waiting on the far shore? Is it her lover or her God?’ I’ve never been able to track this down, if it is a quotation. Is it Dido, meeting Aeneas in the underworld, and turning away from him, unforgiving?

Drabble shows us the sisters’ struggles, rather tired, slightly drunk, with the Latin of Book Four of the Aeneid, and the reproaches that Mercury addressed to Aeneas. They wrestle with the byways of Latin grammar and discover what oblite means. And then, the words fall into place. ‘Alas, you, of your kingdom and fortunes forgetful,’ a reproach to themselves as well as to Aeneas, for they have not achieved all that they wished. But they have struggled, they have persevered. That is what they were put on earth to do.(less)

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Jun 21, 2012 Philip rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Seven Sisters is a superb novel by Margaret Drabble. Seven characters – who all happen to be women – eventually find themselves on a classically-inspired Mediterranean journey. It is a trip of literary and perhaps psychological significance. Thus extracted from their respective comfort zones – if comfort is a relevant term to describe their life-scarred lives – they react individually to their collective experience in quite different ways, differences driven by personality and personal histo...more The Seven Sisters is a superb novel by Margaret Drabble. Seven characters – who all happen to be women – eventually find themselves on a classically-inspired Mediterranean journey. It is a trip of literary and perhaps psychological significance. Thus extracted from their respective comfort zones – if comfort is a relevant term to describe their life-scarred lives – they react individually to their collective experience in quite different ways, differences driven by personality and personal history. But almost defiantly they remain a group determined to share the experience.

The central character of the book, Candida Wilton, became a Virgilian. Attending a class to study the Aeneid provided the label and the partially adopted identity. There were others involved, of course, all under the splendid wing of an aging retired classics teacher.

Candida has moved to London from Suffolk. Approaching sixty, she finds herself single again, divorced from a husband who has sought more tender pastures in which to graze. Occasionally she blames herself for his desertion, especially when reality focuses attention on herself. Somewhat surprisingly Candida is also estranged from her three daughters, an estrangement for which she usually takes responsibility. Reality may have offered a different interpretation and indeed at one point we believe we are getting one. Like may aspects of reality, the experience proves illusory.

So now alone, after the gentility and perhaps predictability of rural married life, Candida’s move to a small flat in a none too salubrious area of west London presents something of a challenge. As she embarks upon her fight for independence, Candida keeps a diary in which she records events, reflections, descriptions, and almost anything that is commonplace. She swims, she prepares skimpy meals for one, starts to recognise the local down-and-outs and attends her Virgil class. In time she accommodates her loneliness as well as her past.

When an unexpected windfall allows some flexibility in her life, she invites her acquaintances and friends on a journey to Carthage and Naples to follow in the footsteps of their man, Aeneas. The woman they engage as their guide becomes the seventh of the sisters, all of who are women of varied and contrasting backgrounds. They are determined to share their experience, but individually respond to it in remarkably different ways. But collectively they leave Dido to her funeral pyre in pursuit of their wandering sailor.

The Seven Sisters is not a novel with a linear plot where events form the story. Margaret Drabble is a much better writer than that. Her novel is simply about the lives of the women involved, how they cope differently with surviving each day and how they approach life’s demands and rewards. It is Candida’s perspective that is always at the centre of the narrative, and it is through her estimations and reactions that we come to know the others. And so vivid is the portrayal of these lives that they almost leave the page to come alive. They seem to have rather more than three dimensions. Inasmuch as it is possible to know anyone, we feel we know all of these women by the end of the trip. That in itself is surprising because Candida at least is not even sure if she knows herself.

In Margaret Drabble’s hands, no life is ordinary and it is the experience of life, itself, to read her engaging and moving novel. The Seven Sisters is no more or less than a remarkable study in character. And Aeneas left Dido. Is there anything new under the sun?

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Jan 07, 2012 Spotsalots added it

Shelves: fiction

On the whole, this was good; readable, at times witty. A tale of a woman in her fifties who's glad to be divorced and remaking her life, even if in a largely timid manner. The narration is mildly suspect, however. The first section is in first person, the second in third, the third and fourth in first (I don't want to reveal too much about that, but...) Our protagonist, writing her diary, is a woman with no admitted prior experience writing, and while I am, I think, nearly always willing to acce...more

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Dec 02, 2011 John rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature, fiction

This, the first work I have read by Drabble left me with mixed feelings. This work traces Candida (all sorts of allusion and inferences can be made becasue of this characters name), a recent divorcee as she moves to London and slowly accumulates a diverse collection of friends. This group ultimately plans, and travels on a joint holiday to greece and other mediterranean venues.
The novel is partitioned into a couple of distinct sections, the first which is told in the first person, traces Cand...more

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Aug 02, 2011 Ensiform rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Candida Wilton, a divorcee of a certain (past middle-aged) years, lives alone in an apartment in London. Writing a diary on her new laptop, she tells of her estrangement from her daughters and her husband’s infidelity in analytical, impersonal tones. She makes a new friend or two and puts up with the occasional attentions of some old friends whom she has mixed feelings for. Then she comes into a large sum of money, and funds a trip to Tunisia in Anaeas’ shoes, bringing six other women in her new...more

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Sep 28, 2010 Kieran Walsh rated it 3 of 5 stars

An interesting coming of age book, which I tend to enjoy, typically. The protagonist, however, is an unlikely subject - recently divorced headmaster's wife, with a disinterested attachment to her three children and recent arriveal in London. Along the way Candidia's life becomes rather cliched. She 'comes into' money, joins a health club, takes a night class, makes a set of new friends and goes on a cruise to Italy.
The literary twist, however, is that her character barely evolves from her borin...more

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Jun 15, 2009 Bob rated it 4 of 5 stars

After some months abroad in far-flung literary landscapes, I tend to return to Margaret Drabble as a sort of literary comfort food, though since this may be the 17th of her 18 novels I have read, it may soon become time to look elsewhere.
By contrast to what I think of as the "writer's workshop" sort of writers who take on the personae of people entirely alien to their actual experience, I rather like the fact that the protagonist of any given Drabble novel is almost always a cultivated middle-cl...more

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Aug 20, 2010 Katherine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

"We hadn't had time to bulid up an easy extra-mural social life" (12).
"...clouds that lay parallel above the horizon like Magritte baguettes" (19).
"Writers have to tell. It's what they do. It's what they are for" (32).
"She digresses to the forbidden subject of solitaire" (35).
“The machine hasn’t got a cliché-spotter, but its cool objective format throws them into high relief” (52).
“At first sight, the produce looked varied and quite tempting, but on closer inspection the charm palled” (57).
“I fe...more

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Dec 29, 2009 Joyce rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Although this reader is overly familiar with the storyline of a 50ish divorcee re-starting her life in the big city, I enjoyed The Seven Sisters very much. As a matter of fact, once I started the book I couldn't put it down. It's always refreshing to read another take on one's own situation although Candida,a doubly well-chosen name,is almost annoyingly passive at times. Yet that's a part of the process she's undertaken by moving out on her own for the first time in her life and moving to London...more Although this reader is overly familiar with the storyline of a 50ish divorcee re-starting her life in the big city, I enjoyed The Seven Sisters very much. As a matter of fact, once I started the book I couldn't put it down. It's always refreshing to read another take on one's own situation although Candida,a doubly well-chosen name,is almost annoyingly passive at times. Yet that's a part of the process she's undertaken by moving out on her own for the first time in her life and moving to London from the countryside. Her fears, timidity and lack of self-esteem are clearly revealed in her journal, part I of the book, which is told in the first person.

And Candida does begin to re-build her life; she takes a class on Virgil, joins a health club and reaches out to some of the people she meets in the class. Through writing in her journal she starts to learn about herself, her distant relationship to her children and her philandering ex-husband. Dido, the betrayed and abandoned, and Aeneas, the betrayer and abandoner, play a part in Candida's mythology.

In part II, told in the third person, Candida travels to N. Africa and Italy, with three new friends, two old friends and a guide, the seven sisters of the title, iterated by the Seven Sisters train depot, the Pleides, the classic names of her friends Ida, Cynthia and Julia. The descriptions of her friends, thoughts, feelings, and especially her surroundings, both in London and while traveling, are beautifully written. The reader can almost feel the warm sun of N. Africa but this book is strictly Candida's interpretation of it all as foreshadowed by the flawed glass of her apartment window.

This is not a big happy book with a big happy ending about big adventures and second loves, but a small rumination on aging and intimacy. It is not even a very hopeful book but it is very real and Part IV is almost happy and almost hopeful despite a little authorial trick in Part III. As Brooke Allen wrote in the NYTimes in 2002, "Engaging the emotions and the intellect simultaneously and possessed of a rare technical ease, ''The Seven Sisters'' is an unusually satisfying novel." This reader agrees.
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Nov 30, 2011 Melissa rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Oh how I wanted to like this more than I did. It begins as the diary of an older woman named Candida, who's just gotten a divorce and is living alone, estranged from her children. She makes all sorts of lovely honest statements that are full of self-pity and hyper-awareness; about the girl at her Health Club who may or may not have cancer, "I can't ask after her, because I don't know her name . . . And anyway, I don't care. I'm curious, but curiosity has nothing to do with caring." She comes in...more

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Jul 14, 2011 Ann Canann rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: novel

I am an American and a huge fan of the very English writer Margaret Drabble who was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire. I love her sister A.S. Byatt too. I'm sure I would love her entire family. What I really love is her delicious use of the English language, but then she is an editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature. She makes the short list of my absolutely favorite writers. And in this book she is at the top of her form.

“The Seven Sisters” is a book that speaks directly to me. It is a...more

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Apr 16, 2010 Eva rated it 4 of 5 stars

Margaret Drabble manages to turn the diary of a middle-aged, recently divorced woman into an interesting book to read. Candida Wilton writes about her new life in a small London flat, contrasting it with her former incarnation as the wife of a snobbish headmaster living in a lovely home in a small town.

As Candida hesitantly charts a new path as a single person, she wryly describes her change in circumstance and attitude. Timidly, she reconnects with old friends and makes new ones. A sudden wind...more

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Jul 01, 2009 Jennifer rated it 2 of 5 stars

At the end of it all, I'm really unsure what this book is about... the salvation to be found in good company? Redemption of the meek through a heady dose of independence? Travel therapy? Why I'm glad I took Latin instead of a more "practical" language?
Forgive my levity, I am truly muddled - M. Drabble is the author of two of my favorite books of all time: the Realms of Gold and the Radiant Way. Both followed interesting characters, unrolled captivating plots and underscored all with questions (i...more

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Jan 01, 2013 Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance rated it 4 of 5 stars

Candida Wilton is stuck. Her husband has left her. She is estranged from her children. She has moved off to the wilds of London and all that is keeping her grounded are her visits to the health club and writing in her journal. And then, quite unexpectedly, her friends.

As one becomes...well, let's just say it...OLDER...it is nice to reflect on the experiences of others who have passed through this time and lived to tell of their adventures. Books are a very nice way to visit these hinterlands uns...more

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Sep 10, 2010 Tara rated it 1 of 5 stars

This was just a random book I picked up at the library based on its praise listed on the back cover, but it was so incredibly boring and weird, I quit reading about 1/3 through and skimmed the rest. It's about this lady whose husband cheats on her, probably multiple times, and finally divorces her so he can marry someone else. The unfortunate ex-wife must now fend for herself in the latter years of life - never having been forced to live alone before. We hear all about her health gym, her grocer...more

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Mar 03, 2009 Gen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary

Interestingly written and organized, this novel starts with a first-person account (a diary) from an English woman who has divorced her otherwise esteemed husband post his affair,left her comfortable suburban home and moved into a gritty London neighborhood to live out her days in a small apartment. Gradually she reconnects with old friends and some newer ones from a class on Virgil. When she comes into some money, she proposes a trip that kicks off the second part of the novel, told in the thir...more

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Jul 13, 2012 Nicky rated it 4 of 5 stars

An older English woman moves to the city after her husband has an affair and chooses to marry the new woman. In the process she increases her emotional distance from her mostly adult children. She explores life on her own, coping with new choices and refelctions on the past. She takes a class, joins a gym and plans an adventurous vacation with a group of women, hoping for a way to move forward. This book had an unusual use of POV, which caught me by surprise twice! In fact that is why I gave it...more

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May 16, 2009 Vicky rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary-fiction

Not the best of the Drabble novels I've read, but nevertheless intriguing. The point of view shifts four times in the course of the book. It starts with the diary of a woman, aged around 60, recently divorced, who has moved to London. I didn't like her very much and wondered what Drabble felt about her. Later we see her in third-person perspective, and then again from the point of view of her daughter. But just when you think you've got a grip on the multiple POVs, another turnabout leaves you s...more

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May 31, 2009 Nancy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club

I would genuinely enjoy sitting down for a cup of coffee with those readers who enjoyed this book; I found it dispiriting and tedious and would like to understand what I missed in my reading of this dreary tome.

If this was not a selection of my book club, I would not have made it through the first 75 pages and, as it was, I plodded along without much enthusiasm until the narrator appeared to change the course of her life.

Perhaps my challenge is that the narrator is a "lady of a certain age" and...more

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Oct 26, 2009 Wyma rated it 3 of 5 stars

I liked the voice in the diary of newly divorced Candida Wilton, who had been wife to a headmasternow married to a wealthy younger woman. Wilton is angry, depressed, and honestly trying to make a life for herself. She makes friends, spearheads a trip for seven women to the land of Virgil with her favorite scholar along. The travel group make up the seven sisters. She makes every effort to be honest with herself, surprising the reader as she reconnects with her daughters and old friends. The stor...more

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May 12, 2012 Leanne Hunt rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Full of Classical allusions, this is the story of a woman nearing the age of sixty who is fascinated by her journey into the underworld and decides to write about it. The beginning is deceptively straightforward because it gives way to surprises on many levels. We are told that, on the surface, Candida does not change as a result of her travels, yet her increased awareness of life's darker side definitely impacts her actions. The book is also a demonstration of the power of the written word; how...more

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May 01, 2012 Lesley rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was the first Margaret Drabble book I’ve read. I enjoyed parts of it, appreciated the skill of her writing and the humour, but parts annoyed me.

She obviously ‘gets’ the 60ish woman and the characters of the ‘Seven Sisters’ were well drawn. I felt I had met aspects of them in friends, family and even myself.

I liked the realism of Candida’s life and enjoyed the way she appeared to take a pigeon-step approach to her voyage of self-discovery. Her character made no miraculous growth and she gai...more This was the first Margaret Drabble book I’ve read. I enjoyed parts of it, appreciated the skill of her writing and the humour, but parts annoyed me.

She obviously ‘gets’ the 60ish woman and the characters of the ‘Seven Sisters’ were well drawn. I felt I had met aspects of them in friends, family and even myself.

I liked the realism of Candida’s life and enjoyed the way she appeared to take a pigeon-step approach to her voyage of self-discovery. Her character made no miraculous growth and she gained few insights into herself as she got to grips with the continued banality of her new life. The portrayal of her passionless marriage worked for me, as did her unkindness about her friend, Sally. I didn’t quite get the disinterest in her children, maybe because I’ve never met a woman like that. Bad relationships, love mingled with dislike, would have worked for me, but disinterest didn’t. I understood what the author was telling me about Candida’s middle-class, prejudiced, snobbish character without the need to hammer it home with a heavy handed overuse of French expressions (about 5 times on one page).

The book’s division into four parts just missed working for me. I liked the changes in voice in parts 1 & 2. The diary form was just right for all those narrator’s observations which made me smile. The descriptions of Candida’s Ladbroke Grove neighbourhood were well done, with lots of quirky details, as were her attempts to start a new life by taking an evening class and then joining the health club which takes over the premises. I thought it was a bit of clichéd plot device to have Candida win the lottery to fund her trip.

The third person narration for the journey to Italy gave part 2 a feel of Maggie Smith and Judy Dench in a soft focus tale of spinsterly friendship. The sharp braking Drabble put on the end of part 2 as the trip was cut short, confused me. The plot veering off made me wonder if I hadn’t been concentrating as I read it, so I had to read it again.
I felt put out by the shift in POV in part 3, mainly because I was upset that Candida had committed suicide when I had been given no clues that her life was that bad. It could have been an interesting twist and I could have accepted the revelation that most of what we had learnt about Candida’s life so far was all lies, if it weren’t for part 4.
For me, this pretending to be written by Candida's least estranged daughter was a literary mechanism that didn't quite work and I actually felt cheated by part 4. It didn’t feel right for the Candida now in my head to be imagining what it would be like to write from her daughter's point of view and what it would be like to fake her own death.

At the end of it all, there were a few too many writerly indulgences for it to be a really good read for me.
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Jan 24, 2012 Barbara rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: novel

Not my favorite Margaret Drabble novel, but definitely readable. The shifting point of view and coy secretiveness were annoying at times but the tale of Candida, former wife of a headmaster, making her middle aged new life in a London slum, studying Latin, and traveling in the steps of Virgil with an odd assortment of friends did engage my interest. Reading her journal was sometimes shocking in it's candid (pun alert) assessment of "friends." Drabble can somehow make an unlikeable character one...more

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Mar 15, 2012 Ben Babcock rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012-read, owned

I went into this book without high expectations. Not only did I know little about Margaret Drabble or The Seven Sisters but I acquired this from the same person who gave me Love the One You’re With , so … yeah. Provenance aside, this book turned out to be immensely satisfying. Drabble creates a main character and narrator who is fallible and sympathetic, and the story she tells is firmly grounded in realism even as she carefully interrogates the recesses of the human heart.

The back of the book i...more

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Mar 17, 2011 Yuliana rated it 2 of 5 stars

The book is horrible. While reading the first chapter, I thought, "This is bad, I hope it will get better". During the second chapter I was ready to rip my face off. The third chapter got kind of interesting but at the fourth chapter it turned out to be a hoax. The ending was horrible, strange and disappointing. I don't see the purpose of this book or what the author was trying to say. Maybe I am just too young to read about a middle aged depressed woman with nothing to do. I won't recommend thi...more

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Nov 11, 2008 LindyLouMac rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/4...

I have not read Margaret Drabble’s entire extensive list of novels, but I have always enjoyed them from as far back as I can recall. I think the first one I read was Jerusalem the Golden in 1967 and over forty years later she is still writing entertaining and literary novels.
The humour and excellent characterisation is up to the author’s normal high standards.
‘The Seven Sisters’ is not written in chapters but in four parts, which made it a little harder t...more

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Jul 30, 2011 Rachel rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

I now regret not having picked up other Drabble books which were on the table at a bookswap last week!

I really enjoyed her clear style of writing. This was refreshingly different from my recent reads. I really like books which make me think 'Oh no! She didn't! That was a rotten trick! That is irritating.' Books, in other words, which make me feel emotionally involved and sympathetic to the character(s). Also anything which makes me think and grin has to be a good thing. However I don't know tha...more

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May 17, 2011 Anne rated it 1 of 5 stars

So a friend recommended this book because of all the references to the Aeneid. These were pretty much the only things I enjoyed about this book. The author uses lots of different voices to tell the story, and I didn't really like any of them. The main narrator seemed whiny to me, and I felt like not much really happened! Perhaps I missed something or just didn't "get it." All in all, I won't be recommending this book unless to people who just want Latin references and otherwise have low expectat...more

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Dec 07, 2012 Joyce rated it 3 of 5 stars

Have you ever read a novel in which you absolutely hate the protagonist? Well, this would be it. A cantankerous, elderly, negative thinking and critical woman has moved herself out of a family lifestyle and set herself up as a single in a shady part of London. She runs down everyone she knows on one hand and yet has empathy for strangers. Margaret Drabble is one of the best novelists of our age and I've enjoyed her other works. Other reviews of this book on good reads give this novel a noble app...more

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title link	preview: The Seven Sisters
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/105022.The_Seven_Sisters?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328874783l/105022.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/105022.The_Seven_Sisters?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Seven Sisters by Margaret Drabble[/url]

The Seven Sisters

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