Shared Lives

by Lyndall Gordon (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1994

  $3.46

  This is the story of three girls who grew up in Cape Town in the 1950s. They were shaped by the South African past, the absurdities of a girls' school, and the pressures to marry at an early age. All three died young. At the centre of the group was Romy, the exuberant daughter of Jewish immigrants. A rebel at school, a resister of weddings, she enraged the men who loved her. As we follow Romy's explosive course, Ellie's struggle with loneliness in her career as a psychologist, and Rose's disappearance into marriage and motherhood, it is the redemptive power of friendship between women that comes to the fore. Through the eyes a school friend - Lyndall Gordon, prize-winning biographer of T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf - the significance of their lives, and their hidden courage and resourcefulness, are revealed. Three obscure women, who left nothing but their stories, letters and memories, are brought to life.

• Used

  Paperback
  2005

  $4.51

  Lyndall Gordon, the acclaimed biographer of T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf, grew up in Cape Town, South Africa in the 1950s. This intimate and moving memoir is the story of Rosie, Ellie, and Romy- her closest friends from childhood until their early deaths. Daughters of Jewish immigrants, these girls grew into adulthood together, shaped by their parents' and grandparents' Eastern European heritages, the stifling atmosphere of their proper girls' school, South Africa's politics, and the intense pressure within their bourgeois milieu for early marriage. Though miles distanced them as they grew older and went off to New York, Oxford and Paris, their bonds of friendship remained strong, separated only by their untimely deaths.

• New

  Paperback
  2005

  $12.74

  Lyndall Gordon, the acclaimed biographer of T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf, grew up in Cape Town, South Africa in the 1950s. This intimate and moving memoir is the story of Rosie, Ellie, and Romy- her closest friends from childhood until their early deaths. Daughters of Jewish immigrants, these girls grew into adulthood together, shaped by their parents' and grandparents' Eastern European heritages, the stifling atmosphere of their proper girls' school, South Africa's politics, and the intense pressure within their bourgeois milieu for early marriage. Though miles distanced them as they grew older and went off to New York, Oxford and Paris, their bonds of friendship remained strong, separated only by their untimely deaths.