<p>January 1987. Alix Bowen has moved away from London to Yorkshire. There, she regularly visits a mass-murderer in a high-security prison. But has her natural curiosity in his motives and character crept into obsession? <br><br>Meanwhile, Alix''s life continues to cross and uncross with her old friends Liz and Esther, now all in their fifties. As the years pass, they increasingly question the brutally prosperous and atrocity-hungry society they live in, and their complicity in it, as they navigate life in 1980s Britain. <br><br>The second in a trilogy following on from<i> The Radiant Way</i> and finishing with <i>The Gates of Ivory</i>, <i>A Natural Curiosity</i> sees Margaret Drabble return with her brilliant and dark wit in this bold, generous and incisive portrait of the time.</p>