RaveThe Tampa Bay Times...a timely and relevant novel about the way we live (and die) now ... The book's central character, Francesca Stubbs, is in her 70s, but she is no 'timid soul.' She is energetic and peripatetic, driving across England for her job with a charity foundation that aims to improve living arrangements for the elderly ... Her family, including an ex-husband and two children, and a circle of friends and co-workers are the spokes that radiate out from the center in this discursive, anthropological novel. Death in its many varieties is here: sudden and unexpected, lingering and agonizing, even a slow decline into the grave that one character seems to be enjoying immensely ... But The Dark Flood Rises is far from being a dour meditation on mortality ... Reading Drabble is like having a brilliant and companionable acquaintance delve into the ways of the world across a dinner table. The subject may be death, but she still brims with life.
