You should not read this if you are approaching the age of 60, 70 or 80. And actually, perhaps you should not read this if you are younger. Because the gloominess of aging and approaching death are omnipresent in this book. Margaret Drabble (76 when she wrote this) has woven a whole network of characters around the 70 year old Fran Stubbs, both in the United Kingdom and in the Canary Islands, because those islands are apparently have become the Florida of the older Brit.

Protagonist Fran is an interesting figure: she is a very active senior, one who, against all odds, continues to tour hyperactively as a prospector of housing facilities for older people. She constantly muses about the physical and mental decline, the approaching end and the different ways in which peers deal with it. “Inspection of evolving models or residential care and care homes for the elderly have made aware of the infinitely clever and complex and inhumane delays and devices we create to avoid and deny death, to avoid fulfilling our destiny and arriving at our destination. And the result, in so many cases, has been that we arrive in good spirits, as we say our last farewells and greet the afterlife, but senseless, incontinent, demented, medicated into amnesia, aphasia, indignity. Old fools, who didn't have the courage to have that last whiskey and set their bed on fire with a last cigarette.”

It is striking that Drabble does not really deliver a story with a plot: she jumps back and forth between the characters, lets them experience all kinds of rather unpleasant things, and makes them constantly worry about more or less the same concerns. It is striking that the characters throughout the novel sometimes literally formulate the same reflections over and over again, as if Drabble wanted to give us a realistic view of the repetitive in older life. It is only at the very end that a few, unfortunately rather predictable, tragic developments follow shortly after each other. Also stylistically Drabble dares to vary a lot with sometimes nice dialogues, some long descriptive passages, a few action scenes, a lot of worrying, and occasional passages in which the author addresses the reader directly. And then there is of course the geographical jump between the UK and the Canary Islands, with even a short digression to the Western Sahara.

Beware: it is not that this book is drenched in gloom; the tone regularly is very light-hearted, somewhat rippling and even ironic-sarcastic. But the whole novel lacks some editing; Drabble constantly introduces new characters, extensive tourist and historical digressions on places in the UK and in the Canary Islands, and she also repeatedly refers to very current issues such as global warming and the refugee crisis. In my opinion, with that very diverse cocktail she drowns her central theme. I also noticed that all her figures come from the upper middle class and have a professional background in the academic, artistic and literary world; that naturally limits the scope of this novel a lot.

Yet the figure of Fran, with her many contradictory feelings, appeals: she still lives as an active fifty something (she drives recklessly with her car, and intentionally moves into a residential tower in a marginal neighbourhood), but at the same time she has fits of desperation ("let there be light, oh Lord, let there be light") but suppresses them. Throughout the novel, the reality of inexorably aging confronts her with the facts of reality, but she continues to fight against it. “She's got to keep going. There is nothing else to do. You keep going until you can go any further. And you can't count on the perfect death, at the end of the run.” In moments of doubt, she continues to hope to put down a great show: “Maybe, at the end, what we need most, in order to make a good exit, is applause. Applause, in a showy part. Going out bravely”

In short, even though this novel drowns in just a little too many storylines and elaborations, it still contains quite a lot of valuable stuff to consider. So maybe it is good that you read this when you approach 60, 70 or 80, or maybe even before. Do not say that you have not been warned. ( )