"The Middle Ground" concerns itself generally with the crisis of British urban life and particularly with a crisis in the life of its protagonist, Kate Armstrong, a 40-year-old journalist who has ridden the wave of the women's movement to fame and riches—away from Romley, the seedy outlying area of London in which she grew up, and away from marriage, which she now scorns on principle. After years of manufacturing opinions on an ever-shifting range of fashionable subjects, Kate is tired—of media hype, of the shallowness of her own opinions, of the effort to maintain the sprightliness and good cheer on which her success and identity rest. She is tired even of feminism.

Miss Drabble, with her unfailing insight and intelligence, does a marvelous job of presenting Kate's plight….

[A] passage of acute psychological characterization is followed by a transition of provoking awkwardness: "Here is an account...