The first story in this collection, "Les Liasions Dangereuses," appeared in Punch in 1964, when Drabble was a bright brand-new literary sensation. It is about a self-conscious young
man at an intellectual party who accidentally sets a glamorous young woman’s hair on fire. Then came stories in Mademoiselle, TheSaturday Evening Post, Ms,
Cosmopolitan . . . stories of all the women Drabble has written about, and sometimes been, from the 1960s to the beginning of the twenty-first century.
As always, her work is astoundingly perceptive, sharp, and funny. It embraces marriage, affairs, global warming, career success, real estate, genetics, gin-and-tonics, female
friendships, mountain climbing, motherhood, and everything else that Drabble has taken an interest in over the past fifty years. This collection is a wonderful development for
readers who already know and love her work—it’s almost like discovering fifteen new novels—but it’s also a terrific place to start.
