u003cbu003eA celebration of the drama and intensity of the mother-child relationship, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. u003cpu003eu003c/bu003eIt is the Swinging Sixties, and Rosamund Stacey is young and inexperienced at a time when sexual liberation is well on its way. She conceals her ignorance beneath a show of independence, and becomes pregnant as a result of a one night stand. Although single parenthood is still not socially acceptable, she chooses to have the baby rather than to seek an illegal abortion, and finds her life transformed by motherhood. u003cpu003e'Rosamund is marvellous, a true Drabble heroine . . . what spirit is here' u003ciu003eSunday Timesu003c/iu003e u003cpu003e'One of our foremost women writers' u003ciu003eGuardianu003c/iu003e u003cpu003e'The novelist who will have done for late twentieth-century London what Dickens did for Victorian London' u003ciu003eThe New York Timesu003c/iu003e
