The Garrick Year is one spent by Miss Drabble's heroine in a furnished house near a theatre in a small English provincial town. Her name is Emma - an attractive, intelligent, albeit self-centered, young woman married to that most egocentric of men, an actor.

The conflict between their personalities and disparate ambitions results, predictably, in quite a few bruises. The freshness lies in the honesty, humor and wry humanity with which this marital tug of war is exposed.

The situation Miss Drabble explores is one of concern to most young marrieds today. Her women are sophisticated, educated, and demand all the things their times have led them to expect, but they find themselves bound to the sterner realities of childbearing, domesticity and the fallibility of love.

As the London Times Literary Supplement so deftly put it: "It is not the accuracy of the observations, the dialogue and the descriptions which are impressive but the feeling that here is a writer of real intelligence using the English language with precision but without affectation, and shaping words and plot to a clear purpose. She has the cogency of an Iris Murdoch without the creamy symbolism."

After being graduated from Cambridge University with honors, Miss Drabble joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford. She is married to an actor and has two small children. The Garrick Year is her second novel.