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It is to be hoped that there are no longer quite so many oppressed women of the Candida Wilton variety as there once were, but any that are around would do well to read this novel, for Candida, despite having connived in her oppression until, in late middle age, circumstances force her to act, is an example of how it is never too late to try.
She is blessed with one salient characteristic, which is, surprisingly, courage, and in boldly finding solace in her grim little flat, she takes that courage in both hands. She joins a Virgil class in Notting Hill where she succeeds in making friends with the odd assortment of people she finds there. She visits a murderer once a week in Wormwood Scrubs, and when the building in which the Virgil class happens is taken over and turned into a health club, she joins that too. Small beginnings, but one thing leads to another.
With a sexy lady novelist who like ‘all writers love[s] flattery’ and is a friend from school, with fat Sally and her new friends from the Virgil class – all distinctive and entertaining characters in their own right – Candida plans to travel to Tunis and follow the path of Aeneas back to Naples and Pompeii. Thus seven women set out on an odyssey.
This odyssey proves of course to be a voyage of self-discovery for the women involved, changing their lives and broadening their horizons. For Candida it is proof that things can change and do. But before there can be real improvement, there is the nadir to be reached.
Drabble has constructed this novel cleverly, in an unusual way which it would be a pity to reveal since the reader should be repeatedly surprised, for nothing, it has to be said, turns out quite as expected. Some might read this novel as a depressing account of the aging process, of dashed hopes and lost opportunities. Sally, for instance, has never seen a naked man, and now she probably never will. But it is also to some extent a moral lesson about making the best of things and not giving in – a wistful tale told with wit and wisdom.
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