1979. Three old Cambridge friends are brought together at a party to celebrate New Year's Eve and the end of a decade. Esther, Liz and Alix first met in Cambridge in the early Fifties, a time when their futures held glittering promise. But with the dawn of the Thatcher era, everything changed. Now middle-aged, how will these confident women cope with the personal and professional challenges they will come to face?

'A sublime example of Drabble's mastery in unravelling the intricacies of intimate relationships' - The Times

"The emotional withdrawal proposed to us in The Radiant Way is truly radical . . . This novel is a valuable specimen of a new consciousness" - * New York Times *

"A sublime example of Drabble's mastery in unravelling the intricacies of intimate relationships" - * The Times *

"Humane, intelligent, engrossing" - * Independent *

"An important book - entertaining, sad, witty, lively, dense with detail" - * Evening Standard *

"The novels brim with sharply observed life and the author's seemingly infinite sympathy for "ordinary women"" - * New Yorker *

"In Britain, Drabble tells us, ambition and idealism are damned equally. The women survive, detached from the world they were so engaged in a decade earlier. The men do worse . . . Drabble surrounds her chilling message - violent disintegration lurks just under the surface - with all kinds of skilful social detail . . . when she takes off into her own elegant figures and jumps, she puts on quite a show" - * LA Times *

"Drabble's late fiction has never been scared off from attempting social chronicle as well as individual psychological dry-point" - * Kirkus Reviews *

"Praise for Margaret Drabble: She was one of the most assiduous chroniclers of female experience in Britain during that time. Drabble's work has always been characterised by astute social observation" - * Guardian *