The Needle's Eye
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good to fair. Paperback. Page Condition: Good - possible tanning. Markings: possible previous owner inscription.
At the heart of The Needle's Eye lies a deceptively simple question: what does it truly cost to live by one's convictions? Margaret Drabble's 1972 novel chronicles the lives of two Londoners — Rose Vassiliou, a wealthy heiress who has renounced her fortune in pursuit of a more authentic existence, and Simon Camish, a successful barrister haunted by his working-class origins — whose unlikely friendship forces each to confront the compromises buried beneath their chosen lives. Set against the backdrop of a grey, socially stratified England, the novel dissects the moral tensions between wealth, guilt, freedom, and obligation with unflinching precision. Drabble writes with the authority of a social realist and the sensitivity of a poet, crafting characters whose interior lives are rendered in meticulous, compassionate detail. The Needle's Eye stands as one of the defining British novels of the 1970s, arguing that the pursuit of goodness is not a triumph but a continuous, exhausting negotiation with the world's demands. A work of rare intellectual and emotional honesty, it leaves the reader asking whether true selflessness is ever possible — or merely the most refined form of self-deception.
Author: Margaret Drabble
Format: Paperback
Genre: Modern fiction
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good to fair. Paperback. Page Condition: Good - possible tanning. Markings: possible previous owner inscription.
At the heart of The Needle's Eye lies a deceptively simple question: what does it truly cost to live by one's convictions? Margaret Drabble's 1972 novel chronicles the lives of two Londoners — Rose Vassiliou, a wealthy heiress who has renounced her fortune in pursuit of a more authentic existence, and Simon Camish, a successful barrister haunted by his working-class origins — whose unlikely friendship forces each to confront the compromises buried beneath their chosen lives. Set against the backdrop of a grey, socially stratified England, the novel dissects the moral tensions between wealth, guilt, freedom, and obligation with unflinching precision. Drabble writes with the authority of a social realist and the sensitivity of a poet, crafting characters whose interior lives are rendered in meticulous, compassionate detail. The Needle's Eye stands as one of the defining British novels of the 1970s, arguing that the pursuit of goodness is not a triumph but a continuous, exhausting negotiation with the world's demands. A work of rare intellectual and emotional honesty, it leaves the reader asking whether true selflessness is ever possible — or merely the most refined form of self-deception.