Diana Athill
Sick in the Suburbs
Germs: A Memoir of Childhood
By Richard Wollheim
The Waywiser Press 264pp £10.99 order from our bookshop
‘To remarks overheard, and to things unexpectedly seen, particularly in hot weather, of which I have had more than my fill, I have given a finality, going well beyond what their content, however dramatic, might warrant.’
That sentence, with its careful exactitude (slightly laborious because of all those commas) and the disconcerting oddness of ‘particularly in hot weather’, gives a hint of what an odd book this is.
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