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.

Birds of Passage is the story of two elderly widows, Ellen Walsh and Alice Pickering. Neighbours for many years, brave of heart and hopeful of Something, they set off on a luxury cruise. The adventure they encounter would not have entered their wildest widows' dreams.

The shipping line employs a waiter who is also a long-time rapist. His victims for this trip are Ellen and Alice. Alice falls in love with him, Ellen loathes him. They both suffer their private agonies in silence, not confessing their plight even to each other. Meantime, by day, their affections are dallied with by lone gentlemen passengers. They get to know another lonely lady, Mrs Dove, and her aggressive half-lesbian daughter—a fine portrait of younger despair. All needing each other, their lives intertwine to the background hum of shipboard life (Miss Rubens, like William Trevor, is superb at maintaining the jostling of her subsidiary characters). Shadowing everything are the nightmare nights. Perhaps credulity is strained a fraction—surely after all these years someone would have reported the rapist? And at moments Miss Rubens glides towards farce, though never topples over. Always beneath the humour we are aware of the serious helplessness of these wretched people on their desperate cruise. (p. 793)