“A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves – a special kind of double.” (Toni Morrison)

/ madamebibilophile

Many of you will know that Ali who blogs at heavenali is doing a year with Margaret Drabble throughout 2024. Ali’s posts of her Drabble reading so far have been really enticing and so I was determined to pick up this author whom I had never read.

A Summer Bird-Cage (1963) was Drabble’s first novel and was published when she was just 24. It’s a really impressive achievement and has definitely encouraged me to read more by her. (Which is lucky as someone cleared out their Drabble collection into my local charity bookshop recently, so there were several Penguin paperbacks with appalling 1980s covers available. Yes, I know it was preposterous to buy them all, but there was something about them all coming from the same reader and staying together that I liked. Also I’ll justify my book-buying any which way 😀 I think the same reader also cleared out their Penelope Livelys and I’m trying to resist…)

(I am genuinely perverse because I honestly wish, if I am going to have these monstrosities, that they were all the same style and the worst one, which to my eyes are the ones with the faces and the dark backgrounds. I just have to reassure myself that they’re all pretty terrible 😀 )

A Summer Bird-Cage is the examination of the relationship between two sisters, from the point of view of the younger one, Sarah, recently graduated from Oxford. She feels directionless and is returning from tutoring in Paris to see her older sister married. Louise also went to Oxford and she is academically less successful than Sarah; she is also breathtakingly beautiful.

A Summer Bird-Cage is an interesting period piece in many ways, as it captures that time when women had more freedom and more choices, but not quite enough. The expectations and pressures towards domestic fulfilment are still significant.

“I thought about jobs, and seriousness, and about what a girl can do with herself if over-educated and lacking a sense of vocation. Louise had one answer, of course. She was getting married.”

The sisters are not close at all and A Summer Bird-Cage is written with a refreshing lack of sentimentality but also a lack of any real jealousy. (Drabble’s sister was AS Byatt and they were both quite open about the fact that while they had a reasonable relationship most of the time, they also weren’t close.) At times Sarah may envy Louise her beauty, and the choices brought by her husband’s wealth, but most of the time she has a bemused indifference.

“There is just this basic antipathy, this long rooted suspicion, that kept us so rigorously apart.”

Sarah is definitely not jealous of Louise’s cold, snobbish husband Stephen, and I really liked this scene from a conversation she has with him at the wedding reception as Stephen pontificates on Art with a capital A:

“ ‘No no, the well-observed norm, that is what art is about. The delicacy of the perception will compensate for any lack of violence.’

 I think he was quoting from one of his reviews.”

We don’t really get to know Louise because Sarah doesn’t know her, and Drabble resists the temptation for fully-drawn, psychologically rounded portraits which would compromise the first-person point of view. Instead the novel portrays the unknowingness of other human beings, even those who are consistently in our lives to a greater or lesser degree.

“I wondered why she was such a mystery, why she didn’t fit together, why she was so unpredictable.”

There isn’t a plot as such, rather we follow Sarah through her first year out of university while her boyfriend is at Harvard; the unhappy lives of her friends; and the unhappy marriage of Louise. Sarah is young, and she can be snarky and judgemental. But what stops her being unbearable is that she fully acknowledges her own shortcomings, and will direct her snarkiness towards herself as much as anyone else:

“Sometimes it seems the only accomplishment my education ever bestowed on me, the ability to think in quotations.”

It’s astonishing to me that Drabble wrote A Summer Bird-Cage at just 24. There is the occasional sentence that is a bit too clever-clever and clunky, and the denouement felt a little bit clumsy given the way the sisters’ relationship had been portrayed up to that point, but these are really minor quibbles. If this is what she achieved in her first novel I can’t wait to see what heights she climbs to later in her writing.

“I don’t know why, but it was only then that I began to realise she was vulnerable. It seemed at the time like a clever and perceptive discovery, but I suppose that in fact it was extremely belated.”

You can read Ali’s wonderful review of this novel here.

To end, a trailer from the RSC’s 2014 production of The White Devil by John Webster, which is where the title of the novel comes from. Of course Sarah would name her book through a literary reference:

28 thoughts on ““A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves – a special kind of double.” (Toni Morrison)”

  2. A delightful Saturday post Madame Bibi, thank you!

    I’ve also been trying to read Drabble alongside Ali this year. I’ve had slightly mixed results but A Summer Bird Cage was one I really liked. I could identify with the sisters’ relationship so a certain extent – I’m one of two sisters too, and not really close to mine, without being antagonistic. I liked the way Louise was seen as somewhat mysterious to Sarah – as I’ve re-established more of a relationship with my sister as an adult, I have often been surprised as to how my preconceptions of how she is have been challenged.

    I also liked A Summer Bird Cage for the way it portrayed, as you say, too many choices/not enough choices for educated women in the 1960s. That was thought provoking and I thought well illustrated the psychological conflicts that caused for women.

    I loved your self mocking comments re your charity shop book buying and your ambiguity about possessing those, almost creepy, covers! I applaud your will power in resisting the Lively’s – if you give in and need to confess I am a very sympathetic confidante!!🤣

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    • Thanks so much! That’s interesting to hear about your mixed experience. I’m looking forward to finding out how I get on reading more of Drabble.

      Thank you for sharing how you found read this as having a sister yourself. I have a brother but no sisters, and I do think there’s something really interesting about the relationship between sisters, especially when close in age. I didn’t have any experience to draw on when reading this in that regard.

      The covers are quite creepy aren’t they? Such strange choices Penguin made in those days! I appreciate your support with the Livelys 😀

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      • I always wanted an older brother; and I do agree, relationships between sisters are often complicated. I do like stories in which this subject is explored (fiction can be better than non-fiction self help sometimes to enable one to gain insight into one’s own psychological mire and gain some clarity to move forward!).

        On the subject of creepy covers, I am not sure of my reaction to the cover of my copy of ‘Wish Her Safe at Home’ – it is almost reminiscent of Miss Havisham! I’ve only just started reading the book, but I think I already know I am going to enjoy it, if enjoy can be the right sort of word for this kind of account.😊

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        • Yes, fiction can be so helpful in gaining insight into your own life. I’ve definitely found that.

          I totally agree about the Wish Her Safe At Home cover. I don’t know if you’ve got to it yet, but a dress along those lines plays a really significant part. Definitely reminiscent of Miss Havisham!

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  3. I thought I had read some Margaret Drabble, but I’ve been getting my Margarets mixed up lately, so I wasn’t sure, and none of the covers you showed rang any bells. I finally looked at a list of her books, and it’s The Red Queen that I read. I don’t remember it very well, but it was interesting enough for me to put a nonfiction book about (or maybe by) that queen on my To Read list. However, I haven’t read it yet.

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    • Easily done – I get my Penelopes confused – Fitzgerald, Mortimer and Lively. I enjoy them all but I can’t always keep straight who wrote what!

      I’m not familiar with The Red Queen at all, but I’ll look out for it, it sounds interesting.

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  5. Oh I am so glad you enjoyed this. I thought the relationship between the two sisters was so well done, and it made me wonder about Margaret and her sister, who as you say were apparently not close. Since reading this in January I have read five more novels and a collection of stories. This was such a great start to my year with Drabble. Those covers are brilliantly awful 😃 I mean whoever thought they were a good decision.

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    • Thanks so much for the inspiration to pick this up Ali! Your reviews have been so tempting and I’m really looking forward to reading more by her.

      I’m not usually one for biographical readings of novels but this one did make me wonder. Two brilliantly clever sisters, not close… it did make me wonder how much of Louise was how Margaret saw AS Byatt…

      The covers are so bad! Even allowing for changing tastes and fashions, it is remarkable that as you say, anyone thought they were a good idea!

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  6. Like Ali, I’m thrilled you enjoyed this! I read it last year and it made my ‘best reads of the year’ list for sheer enjoyment and pleasure, so it’s lovely to be reminded of it here. As you say, it’s a terrific debut for a writer in their early twenties. 🙂

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  7. Glad this turned out so enjoyable–I love the hints of humour coming through in the quotes you’ve shared. I had no idea Drabble was AS Byatt’s sister–I haven’t read her yet either but will certainly try and find a copy. Your Summer Birdcage cover isn’t too terrible either.

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  9. Pleeeeeze say that you went back for the Lively stack and, if you didn’t find them, that they are ALL gone, so that some other kindhearted soul adopted the whole batch of kittens so the family could stay together.

    I’m halfway through rereading this one myself, so I spit-spotted my way through your review but I do agree that it’s shockingly good for 24 years old. Our collections are virtually identical except that I bought them over time at a college booksale, every fall for some years. Except my copy of Garrick Year (I like yours!) matches my Summer Birdcage, the same style as your Middle Ground (mine for that has the photograph). Our Radiant Way copies are only slightly different, but that’s because it was the first of hers I actually bought myself, so it’s the Canadian cover instead (nicer, anyhow, or maybe that’s just “relatively” speaking lol). Are you planning to continue this year? I can’t believe it’s taken me until June to launch along with Ali, but I know she’s not concerned about timing.

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    • All the Lively’s had gone! So I’m hoping someone bought the whole lot 🙂

      Wonderful that we have nearly identical collections! I am planning to continue this year, I hope I get a few more read at least. She’s very readable so I’m hopeful.

      I’ll look forward to hearing how you find this one on a reread.

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