Miss Rubens, no new literary figure, has written ten novels; she won the Booker Prize in 1970, and was short-listed for it in 1978. You would think, then, she was bound to be a household name like Bainbridge or Murdoch. For some unfathomable reason she is not. As Miss Rubens's most active fan I have been conducting a one-woman promotion service on her behalf for many years—converting, I like to think, dozens of readers to her entire works. I even wrote a panegyric on her for the World Service, calling her book, The Elected Member, 'The Electric Member' in my enthusiasm.
Why is she such a heroine to me? Birds of Passage, Miss Rubens's new novel, contains many of the answers. For a start she is funny and that, among women novelists, is a rare quality indeed. Her humour is gentle, poignant, never hilarious. It contains confusions: the possibility of tears beneath the smiles. She is never earnest. Her characters may search for themselves, but she spares us the embarrassment of making any such vulgar declarations, grants us the intelligence to discover for ourselves what they are up to.
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