Jerusalem the Golden

This short novel won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 1967. I hope that if it were published today, it would win the same prize or some similarly august accolade. It is a straight forward narrative account of a Clara, a girl from a town in northern England who moves to London to study French. Borne of an overbearing, negative mother, she feels she has never really connected with life. With good looks and native cleverness, though, she has always felt some greater destiny in store for herself. She gains access to a richer, more complicated world of brilliance and relationships when she becomes embroiled with a Bohemian London family of poets, artists, television producers and the like. She is first infatuated with the daughter, Clelia, who appears to be the most interesting person she has ever met. She soon falls in love with Clelia's brother, Gabriel, and the climax of the story occurs in Paris, where a week has been stolen by the unhappily married Gabriel to spoil Clara. Although an illicit romance in Paris sounds anything but original, the book is full of original insights into a lifestyle and a type of person which lend themselves to fiction. And despite the very evident setting of the novel in 1966 or 1967 in London, the novel remains utterly applicable to middle class life in the English speaking nations of today. By the end of the novel we have come to know Clara. We see her stifling childhood along with the residual effects of her mother's suppression. We see Clara's tentative excursions into romance and finally her ascent from being an observer of life, to being a participant in life. I have not read all of Drabble's work, so I can't say this is her best. I can say that it is better writing than her more lauded early effort, The Millstone. I can also say that Drabble's wit is more acute here than in some of her later works, though I would strongly recommend The Red Queen. Jerusalem the Golden is not so great a work of fiction that one would insist people read as part of some canon of required literature, or anything like that. But it is high quality writing from one of Britain's most eminent authors. If you appreciate real literature which illuminates the inner lives of other consciousnesses, you will appreciate this relatively quick read.