A Life of My Own
A Memoir
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3.9 • 7 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Esteemed biographer and legendary literary editor Claire Tomalin's stunning memoir of a life in literature
“[An] intelligent and humane book…There is genuine appeal in watching this indomitable woman continue to chase the next draft of herself." —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
In A Life of My Own, the renowned biographer of Charles Dickens, Samuel Pepys, and Thomas Hardy, and former literary editor for the Sunday Times reflects on a remarkable life surrounded by writers and books. From discovering books as a form of escapism during her parents' difficult divorce, to pursuing poetry at Cambridge, where she meets and marries Nicholas Tomalin, the ambitious and striving journalist, Tomalin always steered herself towards a passionate involvement with art. She relives the glittering London literary scene of the 1960s, during which Tomalin endured her husband's constant philandering and numerous affairs, and revisits the satisfaction of being commissioned to write her first book, a biography of the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. In biography, she found her vocation. However, when Nick is killed in 1973 while reporting in Israel, the mother of four put aside her writing to assume the position of literary editor of the New Statesman. Her career soared when she later moved to the Sunday Times, and she tells with dazzling candor of this time in her life spent working alongside the literary lights of 1970s London. But, the pain of her young daughter's suicide and the challenges of caring for her disabled son as a single mother test Claire's strength and persistence. It is not until later in life that she is able to return to what gave her such purpose decades ago, writing biographies, and finds enduring love with her now-husband, playwright Michael Frayn.
Marked by honesty, humility, and grace, rendered in the most elegant of prose, A Life of My Own is a portrait of a life, replete with joy and heartbreak. With quiet insight and unsparing clarity, Tomalin writes autobiography at its most luminous, delivering an astonishing and emotionally-taut masterpiece.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Biographer (Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys, etc.) and former Sunday Times literary editor Tomalin turns to her own life in this captivating and thorough memoir. Tomalin sets out to describe her "experience of the world," beginning with what it was like to grow up in mid-20th-century England. Born in London in 1933, Tomalin had a sheltered childhood and was enthralled with books by Beatrix Potter. She was the daughter of composer Muriel Herbert and biographer Emile Delavenay, who once confided in Tomalin that he hated his wife at the time of Tomalin's conception (they eventually divorced). This inauspicious beginning, however, thwarts neither her happiness nor her success, and Tomalin grows into a bright and charming young woman. In 1955 she married a well-known journalist, Nicholas Tomalin, who became the father of their five children (including a boy who died in infancy, a daughter who committed suicide, and a son born with spina bifida). In 1973 her husband was killed on assignment in Israel, and Tomalin buried "the ashes in the village graveyard, next to the grave of our baby son Daniel." In London in the 1970s, Tomalin thrived amid a whirlwind of famous authors (among them, the young Martin Amis, with whom she has an affair). In her 50s, she concentrated on writing biographies, and she describes this period as the "happiest time" of her career. Tomalin's memoir is a gracious, inspiring look at her family, colleagues, and friends.
