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“What she felt for those children, as she was to realise some years later, was a proleptic tenderness.”

So begins The Pure Gold Baby, a novel of lyrical prose that leaves you questioning the reliability of the narrator to great effect.

Nellie has known Jess and her child, Anna, for all of Anna’s life. Drawn together by motherhood, proximity and shared acquaintances, their friendship grows over time. It is Nellie who narrates Jess’s story, often going deep into her friend’s thoughts and perhaps anticipating the truth of her life. For Jess is a perplexing character – warm, friendly, free-spirited, capable of deep love yet reticent. She has an anthropologist’s need to understand the world and creates a career in this field while prioritising her beautiful and intellectually challenged daughter Anna – her pure gold baby. Anna’s absent father is a figure of speculation among her friends as Jess offers only scraps of information from which Nellie pieces together the truth – if it is the truth.

Drabble is a wonderful writer. There is rhythm in every paragraph and she has an unerring ability to draw you back to the simple life of Jess and Anna, peopled as it is with quietly eccentric characters. Jess’s story unfolds over the space of several years as Anna grows and Nellie learns more about Jess’s life. It draws us into the problems of caring for Anna and finding good support for her when it becomes clear the local school is inadequate. This story is woven through loves, friendships, broken marriages, breakdowns and Jess’s intellectual pursuits in anthropology. 

The choice of Nellie as narrator gives a distance to Jess’s story. There is little plot and the pace is as placid as soft-hearted Anna, who remains largely unknown – just as her disability means she remains an enigma to those around her. This is as much Nellie’s tale as it is Jess’s, and there are many digressions. Those to do with anthropology, such as Doctor Livingstone and the Lobster Claw Children mentioned in the opening paragraphs, are beautifully gathered into the narrative; others, like Nellie’s life and her children, are not. 

Pure Gold Baby explores what we really know of those we call friend. And it leaves you wondering just how ‘proleptic’ the narrator has been – does she know the truth she shares with us, or does she merely anticipate its veracity? 

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