A Summer Bird-Cage by Margaret Drabble

I decided to read this when I found out that Margaret Drabble is A. S. Byatt's sister (and I do quite like Byatt) even though they are apparently engaged in a permanent feud. At first, I thought I would love it because the main character and first person narrator (Sarah) seemed so fun and interesting. But it very quickly got unbearable. I found the book shallow, silly, trivial, and annoying. I was especially irritated by the way characters (mainly Sarah and her sister Louise) treat everyone who is 'below' them in terms of social status, money, or appearance. Sarah spends a good part of the novel making spiteful, bitchy comments about her 'ugly' cousin Daphne, from criticism of her legs to excruciating descriptions of her awkward manner. Sarah's supposed intelligence is constantly brought up, but I saw no sign of it. Basically, it's a novel about upper-class British girls who have everything and bitch about it. I cannot believe that Drabble and Byatt are sisters, seeing as Byatt's work is absolutely dripping with intelligence, literary allusions and complex motifs (even if her style often annoys me). Anyways, this was a fast read, and fun at times, but mostly grossly trivial, spiteful, and irritating.