Seven Sisters

When circumstances compel her to start over late in her life Candida Wilton moves from a beautiful Georgian house in lovely Suffolk to a two-room walk-up flat in a run-down building in central London--and begins to pour her soul into a diary. Candida is not exactly destitute. So is the move perversity she wonders a survival test or is she punishing herself? How will she adjust to this shabby menacing but curiously appealing city? What can happen at her age to change her life? <br> In a voice that is pitch-perfect Candida describes her health club her social circle and her attempts at risk-taking in her new life. She begins friendships of sorts with other women-widowed divorced never married women straddled between generations. And then there is a surprise pension-fund windfall . . . <br> A beautifully rendered story this is Margaret Drabble at her novelistic best. <p/>