The Pure Gold Baby
By Margaret Drabble
304 pages;
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
For a
few short paragraphs, you may think the baby at the center of Margaret
Drabble's new novel is actually made of pure gold. But little Anna's purity and
gilded charm are based on her ability to make strangers fall almost instantly
in love with her. She is that special kind of infant, writes
Drabble. "You have seen them in parks, in supermarkets, at airports. They
are the happy ones...when you look at them their response is to smile." In this
case, Anna has yet another distinguishing quality. She is mentally handicapped
and will never learn to read or write. The story is not told from the perspective
of her single mother, Jess, but from a family friend, Eleanor, who's deeply
entrenched in their neighborhood parent group. What emerges is a portrait of
1960s London and that "ragged informal community of children which
accepted [Anna] for what she was, promoted by the kind example of their
parents." As well meaning as these fellow mothers are, few get to know
anything about Anna. Much later, when they're forced to face challenges in
their own families, you may wonder if Anna's unexamined nature has left her
better off, or at least less damaged, than her supposedly more advanced and
integrated peers. A thought-provoking read on the complexities of difference.
— Leigh Newman
