Instead of a Book: Letters to a Friend - Softcover

Diana Athill

3.86

145 ratings by Goodreads

9781847084149: Instead of a Book: Letters to a Friend

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847084141 ISBN 13: 9781847084149

Publisher: Granta Books, 2012

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Diana Athill has corresponded with the American poet Edward Field for over thirty years, freely sharing jokes, pleasures and pains with her old friend, and writing with an intimacy and spontaneity even more revealing than the candour of her celebrated memoirs. Edited, selected and introduced by Athill, and annotated with her own delightful notes, this collection of those letters reveals a sharply intelligent woman with a keen eye for the absurd, a brilliant turn of phrase and a wicked sense of humour. Covering her career as an editor, the adventure of her retirement, her immersion in her own writing and her reactions to becoming unexpectedly famous in her old-age, and including gossip about mutual friends, sharp pen portraits, and uninhibited accounts her relationships - and ailments - Instead of a Book gives a wonderful description of a woman growing older without ever losing her zest for life.

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Review:

`Fascinating and surprising ... Every page of this book shows that Athill's eye is as beady as ever'
--Sunday Times

'These are vivid reports on life in late 20th-century Britain ... Athill has given us a great deal' --Guardian

`A charming, witty and utterly life-affirming collection ... A delight' --Time Out

'A joy to read and wonderfully entertaining. Athill makes you hope that letter-writing is not a lost art' --Metro

'A candid picture of Athill's past 30 years and a testament to the cathartic nature of letter-writing'
--The Times

'Athill describes beautifully those "lovely moments of pure being" that make it all worthwhile' --Financial Times

'This hand written insight into the sharp wit and tenacious, nurturing soul of Athill is a joy' --Psychologies

'The author once described a new friend as `on the side of the angels'. So is Diana Athill'
--Spectator

About the Author:

DIANA ATHILL was born in 1917. She helped Andre Deutsch establish the publishing company that bore his name and worked as an editor for Deutsch for four decades. Athill's distinguished career as an editor is the subject of her acclaimed memoir Stet, which is also published by Granta Books, as are five volumes of memoirs, Instead of a Letter, After a Funeral, Yesterday Morning, Make Believe, Somewhere Towards the End and a novel, Don't Look at Me Like That. In January 2009, she won the Costa Biography Award for Somewhere Towards the End, and was presented with an OBE. She died in January 2019.

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