The Pure Gold Baby by Margaret Drabble

Anna is a girl with a sunny temperament, trusts strangers without hesitation, and wins medals for her doggy paddling: ‘Anna was born happy, a pure gold baby.’ Anna has autism and lives in a time when no allowances are made despite her condition. She looks no different, how is anyone to know? Thankfully, however, Anna is raised by her mother Jess. Jess is an anthropologist who has a disliking for the National Geographic. She is a compassionate woman with a hungry mind, researching child deformities in Africa from their basic flat in deepest North London. Together they live through the contrariness of life during a time when attitudes towards motherhood and disability are shifting.

The Pure Gold Baby is a retrospective assemblage of anecdotes told by an onlooker, who stirs sympathy, not pity, for Anna and Jess. The engaging outsider's focus is primarily on the complexity of this mother-daughter relationship. The non-linearity of the story, its weaving in and out of memories, lends itself to the over-arching theme of uncertainly and newness. The narrator's perspective is fitting; while it duly stirs emotion it is not didactic or intrusive. Ultimately the novel is presently and unexpectedly uplifting. [Maria Whelan]