Praise for Margaret Drabble: "Reading a Margaret Drabble novel has always been like cozying up with a cup of hot tea by a gas fire with a dull English winter rain misting the window, and contemplating the story of one's own life."
—The New York Times "As meticulous as Jane Austen, and as deadly as Evelyn Waugh."
—Los Angeles Times "The deft commingling of the sentimental and the matter-of-fact is characteristic of writer Margaret Drabble…Drabble is one of the most versatile and accomplished writers of her generation."
—Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker "Reading Margaret Drabble's novels has become something of a rite of passage…Sharply observed, exquisitely companionable tales of women of a certain age and class, educated, egocentric, strong, unlucky in love."
—Washington Post "Drabble's fiction has achieved a panoramic vision of contemporary life."
—Chicago Tribune "What distinguishes Drabble's fiction from the commonplace is that, like Doris Lessing's early work, it nails femaleness. Drabble's women bleed, some metaphorically, but not all."
—San Francisco Chronicle "A superb novelist."
—The Dallas Morning News —
Description
Just thirty-eight-years-old, Anthony Keating’s already survived both a divorce and a heart attack. He has left the BBC for the dangerous life of property speculation in the boom-and-bust 1970s, and is brooding on the oil crisis, galloping inflation and the slump in his grand house in the British countryside. His only stroke of good luck in an otherwise collapsing life is his new lover, the beautiful actress Alison Murray. But when Alison’s daughter Jane is arrested while traveling in Eastern Europe, Alison rushes to try and save her, and Anthony soon follows and finds himself caught by the strife and hardships of the communist bloc. Set against a backdrop of the Cold War and the political turmoil that led England to Margaret Thatcher, The Ice Age tells the story of three people desperately seeking firm ground amidst chaos with Margaret Drabble’s characteristically "high degree of intelligence and irony" (The New Yorker).
