Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir by Diana Athill
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Book Reviews of Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir
Book Review: A tender, beautiful, inspiring book
Summary: 5 Stars
Diana Athill's beautifully-written new book, Somewhere Towards the End (Norton, 2009) has the unique quality of being a memoir of being very old and happy about it without the maudlin set pieces or generic nostalgia one might expect in a fin de siecle.
The 90-year-old Athill was during her 20th century career a notable British editor who worked with Andre Deutsch in setting up one of Europe's most-respected publishing houses. She worked with such authors as Jean Rhys, V.S. Naipaul, Philip Roth and John Updike to name a few. She has also been, occasionally, an author herself of several highly-respected volumes, mostly memoirs but also a book of short stories and one novel (the one, she says, she "squeezed" out).
Somewhere Towards the End is composed to sixteen relatively short chapters, all of which center on Athill's experience of being, as she terms it, "very old." She has had a rich and varied life, not necessarily glamorous but well-lived. Although she has never had (nor wanted) children, it is clear she is a motherly figure in the way she has taken care of people in her life, including her mother and a past lover.
Athill, who frankly discusses topics such as being post-sexual, not being around to see the full growth of a tree she has planted, and so on, relies very little on metaphor to make her points, instead filling the pages with concrete little treasures of experience, such as this passage when she discusses her pleasure in being around young people:
"So if when you are old a beloved child happens to look at you as if he or she thinks (even if mistakenly!) that you are wise and kind: what a blessing!... [it] does make you feel like a better person while it's going on and for an hour or two afterwards... It does seem to me that the young nowadays are often more sophisticated than I used to be, and that many of them... relate to their elders more easily than we did; but I am convinced that one should never, never expect them to want one's company, or make the kind of claims on them that one makes on a friend of one's own age. Enjoy whatever they are generous enough to offer, and leave it at that."
Her spirited championing of youth belies the stereotype of the rebellious youth we think many "old people" maintain, and so in her writing Athill breaks another stereotype that many of us have about old people, namely that they are narrow thinkers, static and unwilling to change and so very much "post life." Among many other points to ponder, the book made me think that it is somewhat ironic, of course, that old people should be so marginalized in Western societies given the universal inevitability of growing old (and dying). In one of the more moving passages of the book, Athill writes:
"What dies is not a life's value, but the worn-out (or damaged) container of the self, together with the self's awareness of itself... That is what is so disconcerting to an onlooker, because unless someone slips away while unconscious, a person who is just about to die is still fully alive and fully her or himself... The difference between being and non-being is both so abrupt and so vast that it remains shocking even though it happens to every living thing that is, was, or ever will be."
Far from being a depressing swan song, Somewhere Towards the End is a wonderfully uplifting and amazing exploration of what it is to be alive and human.
Book Review: Somewhere towards the end
Summary: 5 Stars
Diana Athill, now 91, is a remarkable woman. She was an editor for Andre Deutsch in London for 50 years, retiring at 75.
Somewhere Towards the End is an honest, funny, revealing glance at her life. This is not a book about how to be noble and wise, but rather a long essay about being true to oneself. She writes, for instance, about wanting a pug but realizing that she is too old to take it for walks. She continues, commenting that her friend and author Jean Rhys was her "object lesson, demonstrating how not to think about getting old...She expected old age to make her miserable, and it did...." And, more humorously, about another friend who, "slapped on a lot of scarlet lipstick, [which] would soon come off on her teeth and begin to run into the little wrinkles round the edge of her lips, making her look like a vampire bat disturbed in mid-dinner." Athill does feel, even now, that a bit of makeup makes her feel better.
Athill was a wild one in her unconventional young years, and in her older years as well. She doesn't fudge, writing things that may shock some even in this day. She touches on love and relationships, religion or her lack thereof, but also charms her readers with the memory of her grandmother reading bible stories aloud.
There are times when she does focus on aging. Consider her observations on relating to younger people, those who are just beginning. "It enables us actually to feel again--that we are not just dots at the end of thin black lines projecting into nothingness, but are parts of the broad, many-coloured river teeming with beginnings, ripenings, decayings, new beginnings--are still parts of it, and our dying will be part it...."
Part of Athill's aliveness, I believe, is her ability to continue learning. Not only was she a late blooming author, but also artist, seamstress, and gardener. She observes her bodily decline with candor and her driving foibles (at the age of 89) with humor. Athill writes of the decline of her companion, once lover, with tenderness and clarity.
Perhaps, what captured my interest most about Diana Athill was her chapter on books and book reviews. She has been a book reviewer for these many years. She comments that it pushes one toward some books that one would not naturally pick up and she goes on to mention one that I, too, reviewed: Georgina Howell's book on Gertrude Bell. Athill, then goes off on a delightful tangent about her dislike of the name Gertrude. Somewhere Towards the End is a delightful, scrappy engagement. When I grow older, I want to be like Diana Athill.
by Judith Helburn
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
Book Review: A NICE OLD LADY
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this book specifically with the hope that I, nearing 60, might glean what it really is like to be much, much older and how I might cope with myself and with life. Granted I'm the sex opposite the author's own, but I still had hopes that I might understand better about aging and debility (since sporty John Jerome's "On Turning Sixty-Five" wasn't interesting to me and Gore Vidal, who is only 82, isn't likely to write such a helpful book at all), and I'm glad to report that my hopes were fulfilled. What I gleaned cannot be summarized with details, but what was conveyed in the reading was and is an existential self-confidence in being able to deal with life's limitations.
As the earliest reviewer reported, Diana Athill hits all the tough subjects: sex, death, losing one's parents, broken hearts, disabilities, losing interest in books and activities, unions and disunions. Yet all these tough subjects are considered intelligently while also being personable and non-despairing.
The one exception, for me, was the chapter discussing gardening. While gardening is one of the author's joys, here, I felt I was a nephew being forced to listen to an aging aunt nattering on heedlessly about plants, as any aging aunt might. But this was a brief experience, the only "boring old trout" (her words) part; the memoir is only 182 pages long besides.
One might assume that being a famous editor for decades, Diane Athill's first topics easily might be around books or authors or writing. Not so. She doesn't come around to discuss literary matters till Chapter 13 of this 16-chapter memoir. Quite astonishingly, she informs her readers that in her late years she no longer reads fiction; it doesn't interest her just as her body, at 70, was no longer interested in sex. She does, however, admire the life of novelist Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell as it's revealed by her biographer. (The woman has never developed an interest in watching television!) And she lets you know she began to write late in life and she thoroughly enjoys writing for its healing and liberating effects.
With no trace of sentimentality or self-absorption in this memoir, it ends on an upbeat note. Diane Athill at 92, "selfish" and independent though she's always been, likes life, and doesn't want to see it end.
I found it refreshing to find a woman of her years being able, so intelligently, to be frank about sex, black men as lovers, and atheism (my kind of friend) while writing in a style that is full of grace, economy and intimacy. Oh, and what a perfect and touching title for this book!
Book Review: What an excellent read
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a book I will read again. And again. I found in it such a quiet reflection on life, beautifully put. This woman is a gifted writer, and I appreciate her experience with old age with death on the horizon, the end of life. I am in that place of view now, and this is a book to help me with my final part of life. There are several other authors who have spoken for me me in the way that Athill has - Joan Didion and May Sarton. It is a wonderful and strengthening experience to see my innermost feelings put into words and concepts. It makes me stronger, and it makes me more clear about life and about myself.Book Review: Humorous, thought-provoking, intelligent
Summary: 5 Stars
A must-read for those of us in the final third of our lives. For the many of us who can totally relate to the author's experiences in love and work, Diana Athill's humor and thought-provoking musings give voice to what we secretly may think but dare not admit. And for those whose life experience has been somewhat different from hers, she provides a new way of looking at the end of life that invites us to laugh, accept, and look forward to what comes next without anxiety or fear.