A Natural Curiosity

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Rich in character and incident, A Natural Curiosity sweeps the reader from smart London townhouses to a run-down embassy in the Middle East, from the splendours of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris to drowsy afternoons in the hills of sunny Italy, as we re-encounter Alix, Liz, and Esther, three erudite, middle-aged, Cambridge-educated women living in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. The story opens in 1987, when Alix, a conscientious social worker, befriends a convicted killer, when a dazed housewife begins an affair with a stranger after her husband’s suicide, and a comfort-loving TV executive undertakes to rescue a friend who’s been kidnapped by terrorists. A Natural Curiosity is wondrous and astute, and in Margaret Drabble’s hands, the seemingly improbable becomes vividly real.