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Bezig met laden... Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography (2000)door P. D. James
Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. bought in Hesser's in Cambridge although I would have sworn it was Blackwells in Oxford - it was a cold unhappy evening ( ) When I first read this book, some years ago, I was disappointed. I suppose I had hoped to find an eloquent crusader for the truths of Christian orthodoxy and against the adulteration of the Prayer Book. Instead, what I seemed to find was a well-to-do old lady who just wanted a little peace and quiet, content in the end to be on good terms with the generally prevailing fatuities of the times. Now, on rereading, I'm a lot more tolerant and appreciative. I imagine that if I were a talented and successful writer with a solid life of achievement behind me, like the Baroness James, I would probably write a diary such as hers with much the same characteristics ( faults?). After all, it's not so easy to be sure one is right and to avoid expressing oneself only hesitantly. In less pretentious terms: this time I enjoyed the book. It took me a long time to read this book, but that is mainly because it sent me off on so many wonderful tangents. Great fun! What an amazing person! She really had her plate full. I loved hearing about her growing up and her favorite authors. I learned of Tragedy at Law from this book and really enjoyed it. She really pegged it on her description of the perfect reading spot. So much to treasure here. I read it as part of my resolution to read and discard this year, but I may not be able to discard this one.
This book is no septuagenarian's exercise in nostalgia. James's deep faith in traditional institutions is coupled with searing experience of the ugliness of life. The evidence dribbles out. Childhood in beautiful Shropshire and Cambridge was clouded by her parents' unhappy marriage, her mother's compulsory detention in a mental institution and her father's parsimony. Schooling ended when she was 16, followed by a dull job in the British tax service. A happy marriage when she was 21 was shattered when her husband, a doctor, returned from World War II insane. Life thereafter divided between supporting two daughters and Sunday visits to the asylum. There was no thought of remarriage after his death (in 1964) because she never found anyone else she wanted to marry. Now she lives alone with her cat and fears of Alzheimer's disease. Is verkort in
In 1997, P.D. James, the internationally acclaimed author of mysteries, turned seventy-seven. Taking to heart Dr. Johnson's advice that at seventy-seven it is "time to be in earnest," she decided to undertake a book unlike any she had written before: a personal memoir in the form of a diary. This enchanting and highly original volume is the result. Structured as the diary of a single year, it roams back and forth through time, illuminating James's extraordinary, sometimes painful and sometimes joyful life. Here, interwoven with reflections on her writing career and the craft of crime novels, are vivid accounts of episodes in her own past--of school days in 1920s and 1930s Cambridge ... of the war and the tragedy of her husband's madness ... of her determined struggle to support a family alone. She tells about the birth of her second daughter in the midst of a German buzz-bomb attack; about becoming a civil servant (and laying the groundwork for her writing career by working in the criminal justice system); about her years of public service on such bodies as the Arts Council and the BBC's Board of Governors, culminating in entry to the House of Lords. Along the way, with warmth and authority, she offers views on everything from author tours to the problems of television adaptations, from book reviewing to her obsession with Jane Austen. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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