No aspect of contemporary Britain escapes the swivel eye of Drabble's promiscuous revulsion. Abattoirs, Britain's so-called ''Heritage Industry,'' the judiciary, even literary critics, are all gobbled up, like insects in the path of a famished bat. But not for long. After all, this is hardly the first time that we have come across a system ''which has decreed that some should be nonexecutive directors of companies on vast salaries, while others should teach small infants or drive long-distance lorries or wipe the tables in the service stations of the land. And in the last decade, they have become more and more different.
Banality is forgivable.
But Drabble manages the paradox of complacent anger, which is not. Both of Drabble's obvious influences, Dickens and Woolf, wrote sharp political satire, the price of which was a certain amount of caricature. Drabble lacks the energy of these two writers. More important, she has none of their coherent restlessness. Drabble's novel certainly has a restless surface, but like someone fidgeting in a chair, it is restless in the same place.