The Ice Age by Margaret Drabble has an authority about it that is new to her work. In Realms of Gold she began to assume that the large designs of the English novel were there for the taking but allowed herself to get caught up in imitations of Murdochian games. In The Ice Age she handles an intricate plot with confidence and creates a cast of characters meant to reflect a range of attitudes toward modern day Britain…. The Ice Age is an extraordinarily open work with elegiac passages that create a public background for the enactment of private lives…. [Control] of history and acceptance of the facts is one pole of the novel. The other is a cinematic odd-angled view of the trashy modern improvements in a heartless urban landscape of cement, steel, lurid hotel interiors and cheap goods that reveal the anxiety of everyday life. Alison...