Diana Athill
Family Fortunes
Mosaic: Portraits in Fragments
By Michael Holroyd
Little, Brown 283pp £19.99
Michael Holroyd says in his preface that he intended this book to be a postscript to his family memoir Basil Street Blues, but that it became a separate entity, composed so that 'anyone can follow the narrative without having read, or remembered, the earlier work'. And of course it can be so followed; but I think a reader of it gains a good deal from familiarity with the memoir. Much of the new book is taken up with accounts of how Holroyd discovered more about people he already knew (or knew about), and filly to appreciate this 'more', one needs to have shared with him the 'less' he started out with.
The mosaic he constructs is in six parts. The first captures briefly, but with wonderful precision, the way in which after a parent's death, out of the cloud of grief, guilt, relief, shame and love which muffles the event there can float a clear image of that parent as him-
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk