Maggie Gee's importance as a novelist rests on her stylistic innovations and choices of subject matter, which is often political: Gee is, for example, a fierce opponent of nuclear armament. Gee is also known for writing about characters whose lives are often dull and nondescript, whose personalities are somewhat unappetizing, or both. She has studied some of the more arcane and innovative writers of the earlier twentieth century and is herself inventive and artful in the construction of narrative. Her six novels vary in genre and yet frequently share concerns, including most notably the lasting, profound, and unpredictable effects of the actions and events of individual lives on surrounding persons and sequences of events.

Mary Gee was born in Poole, Dorset, on 2 November 1948 to Aileen Mary Church Gee and Victor Valentine Gee. She was educated first at Horsham High School for Girls and then attended Somerville College, Oxford...