What to Look for in Winter: A Memoir in Blindness - Hardcover

McWilliam, Candia

3.4

182 ratings by Goodreads

9780062094506: What to Look for in Winter: A Memoir in Blindness

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062094505 ISBN 13: 9780062094506

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2012

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HardCover Pub Date: 2012 Pages: 464 in Publisher: Harper The most startling discomforting. Complicated ungovernable. Hilarious and heartrending of memoirs (The Telegraph. London) - the story of a celeated writer's of sudden descent into blindness. and the redemptive journey into the past that her loss of sight sets in motion In 2006 the acclaimed novelist Candia McWilliam began losing her sight. a gradual onset of blindness that seemed like an assault cruelly tailored for someone whose life consisted of reading and writing. Propelled to look inward and into the past. McWilliam embarked on a painful personal voyage through a waste of snows punctuated by shards of ice as she attempted to write her life back. What followed was a flow of memory: her childhood in Edinburgh. her devastating alcoholism . finding and losing her bearings in Camidge and London. her marriages. her chil...

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Product Description:

The British literary sensation--"the most startling, discomforting, complicated, ungovernable, hilarious and heart-rending of memoirs " (The Telegraph)--the story of a celebrated writer's sudden descent into blindness, and of the redemptive journey into the past that her loss of sight sets in motion. Candia McWilliam, whose novels A Case of Knives, A Little Stranger, and Debatable Land made her a reader favorite throughout the United Kingdom and around the world, here breaks her decade-long silence with a searing, intimate memoir that fans of Lorna Sage's Bad Blood, Mary Karr's Lit, and Diana Athill's Somewhere Toward the End will agree "cements her status as one of our most important literary writers beyond question" (Financial Times).

Review:

"This is an astonishingly honest memoir about blindness, failed marriages and alcoholism as well as the joys of motherhood and the natural world. All delivered in a beautiful, athletic style one can only envy."--Edmund WhiteEdmund White

"A dramatic memoir, which showcases [McWilliam's] elegant voice."--O, the Oprah Magazine

"[An] astonishing memoir - sprawling, riveting, out-of-control, heartbreaking, hilarious and at times so vivd and captivating that, yes, you might wish you had stood in McWilliam's shoes."--Susan Ager, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"[A] shimmering memoir....The unblinking contemplation of a life whose woozy chutes-and-ladders path led, literally and otherwise, into darkness....Eloquently recalled....McWilliam gathers the ineffable spaces of her past and knots them into something practical, expansive, and enduring."--Jan Stuart, Boston Globe

"Candia McWilliam's much-praised memoir What to Look for in Winter is my favourite book of the year, startlingly honest, wry, sad and wise."--Dave Nicholls, The Guardian (London)

"An astonishingly honest memoir about blindness, failed marriages and alcoholism as well as the joys of motherhood and the natural world. All delivered in a beautiful, athletic style one can only envy."--Edmund White

"Beautiful, harrowing and in every way remarkable."--New Statesman

"The most startling, discomforting, complicated, ungovernable, hilarious and heart-rending of memoirs."--Sunday Telegraph (London)

"Extraordinary.--The Independent

"One of the most extraordinary literary autobiographies of this or any other year."--The Times (London)

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