Somewhere Towards the End

by Diana Athill (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $3.25

  Diana Athill made her reputation as a writer with the candour of her memoirs, now aged ninety, and freed from any inhibitions that even she may once have had, she reflects frankly on the losses and occasionally the gains that old age brings, and on the wisdom and fortitude required to face death. This is a lively narrative of events, lovers and friendships: the people and experiences that have taught her to regret very little, to resist despondency and to question the beliefs and customs of her own generation.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2008

  $3.25

  Diana Athill will be ninety in December, 2007. Somewhere Towards the End tells the story of what it means to be old: how the pleasure of sex ebbs, how the joy of gardening grows, how much there is to remember, to forget, to regret, to forgive - and how one faces the inevitable fact of death. Athill has lost none of her skill or candour as a writer, her love of the intimate detail. Her book is filled with stories, events and people, and the kind of honest, intelligent reflection that has been a hallmark of her writing throughout her long career. 'We rarely did anything together except make ourselves a pleasant little supper and go to bed, because we had very little in common apart from liking sex,' she writes of her last affair, when she was in her late sixties. 'We also shared painful feet, which was almost as important as liking sex, because when you start feeling your age it is comforting to be with someone in the same condition.'Diana's previous books are: Instead of a Letter , After a Funeral , and Stet , her much praised memoir of her life as a book editor (many said the best in London) with Andre Deutsch. She describes her books as 'documentaries' and her early work prefigured the modern taste for memoir. As she writes in Somewhere Towards the End , 'I believed, and still believe, that there is no point describing experience unless one tries to get it as near to what it really was as you can make it, but that belief does come into conflict with a central teaching of my upbringing: do not think yourself important.'