The Garrick Year
Margaret Drabble
Available as Paperback, eBook
9 April 2026
A sharp and merciless dark comedy about marriage, motherhood and the pull of ambition
Choked by domesticity and overshadowed by her husband’s acting career, Emma is finding that life has reduced her to a supporting role. And when her husband lands his big break at a new theatre company, her want for something more boils over.
Quietly radical and fiercely intelligent, The Garrick Year is a sharp and merciless dark comedy about marriage, motherhood and the pull of ambition, told through the eyes of a complicated and fascinating woman at the very end of her tether.
“Full of bite, wit and cool poetry … it is written with extraordinary art”
new York Times
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“[A] romantic novel about actors and the theatre and marriage and sex and babies … deliciously bitter … so alive”
new Yorker
“Unsparing … a very knowing, diverting entertainment”
kirkus Reviews
”Praise for Margaret Drabble: I have learned so much from Margaret Drabble’s work. Her prose is very beautiful, very funny, and at the same time very serious”
Sally Rooney
“One of Britain’s most dazzling writers”
new York Times
Margaret Drabble
Dame Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield in 1939 and was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. She is the author of eighteen novels including A Summer Bird-Cage, The Millstone, The Peppered Moth, The Red Queen, The Sea Lady and the highly acclaimed The Pure Gold Baby. She has also written biographies, screenplays and was the editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature. She was appointed CBE in 1980, and made DBE in the 2008 Honours list. She was also awarded the 2011 Golden PEN Award for a Lifetime’s Distinguished Service to Literature. She is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd.