A Woman on the Edge of Time: a son’s search for his mother - Hardcover

Gavron, Jeremy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1925228096 ISBN 13: 9781925228090

Publisher: Scribe UK, 2015

Synopsis

It's 1965, and in Primrose Hill, north London, a beautiful young woman has just gassed herself to death, leaving behind a suicide note, two small children, and an about-to-be-published manuscript: The Captive Wife.

Like Sylvia Plath, who died in eerily similar circumstances two years earlier just two streets away, Hannah Gavron was a writer. But no one had ever imagined that she might take her own life. Bright, sophisticated, and swept up in the progressive politics of the 1960s, Hannah was a promising academic and the wife of a rising entrepreneur. Surrounded by success, she seemed to live a gilded life.

But there was another side to Hannah, as Jeremy Gavron's searching memoir of his mother reveals. Piecing together the events that led to his mother's suicide when he was just four, he discovers that Hannah's success came at a price, and that the pressures she faced as she carved out her place in a man's world may have contributed to her death. Searching for the mother who was never talked about as he grew up, he discovers letters, diaries, and photos that paint a picture of a brilliant but complex young woman grappling to find an outlet for her creativity, sexuality, and intelligence.

A Woman on the Edge of Time not only documents the too-short life of an extraordinary woman; it is a searching examination of the suffocating constrictions in place on intelligent, ambitious women in the middle of the twentieth century.

About this title

About the Author

Jeremy Gavron is the author of six books, including the novels The Book of Israel, winner of the Encore Award, and An Acre of Barren Ground; and A Woman on the Edge of Time, a memoir about his mother’s suicide. He lives in London, and teaches on the MFA at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina.

Edition details

• Publisher: Scribe UK
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1925228096
• ISBN 13: 9781925228090
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272