The Red Queen

An 18th-century Korean princess tells her harrowing life story in the lyrical first half of Margaret Drabble’s lovely, intelligent 16th novel. The Red Queen. Married at 10, the melancholy princess bears her first son at 15, loses him two years later, and subsequently watches her husband descend into madness. In the book’s brisker, funnier second half, thoroughly modern Babs Halliwell, a sexy British scholar, reads the same memoir we have just finished while flying to an academic conference in Seoul. Transfixed by the narrator’s wistful voice and struck by parallels to her own life, she delves deeper into the princess’ world during her visit to Korea — triggering both a brief romance and a series of life-changing events.