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 rather selfish life...
Summary: 3 Stars
A life lived fully, and the conclusion is: no God, infidelity is okay if no one gets hurt; focus on your life--on self.
On marriage, Ms. Athill's justification for infidelities are the two extremes, radical Islam, where a woman brings shame on her family unless she is put to death, or infidelity is, as the French believe, "perfectly acceptable if conducted properly."
Her conclusion between a man and woman is basic animal behavior.
Ms Athill, does not believe in God. She calls herself an achiest. This was crystallized by the comment of a casual lover many years ago: "...might not be that beginnings and endings are things we think in terms of simply because our minds are too primitive to conceive anything else?"
She believes after 91 years on earth that to believe in God means "smallness and boring...even frightening." She further concludes, "People of faith so often seen to forget that the God who gives their lives meaning too often provides them with justification when they want to wipe out other people who believe in other Gods, or in nothing." Believers created beliefs, or these Powers, so they could turn to them for direction and control behaviors. "The mechanism was a obviously necessary one in its time..."
But a few sentences later she says, "Right behavior, to me, is the behavior taught me by my Christian family...I have accepted Christ's teaching partly because it continues to make sense."
She does a great service by sharing the simple truth that we're never too old to learn something new. Nor to old to make new friends in the process. She gives deep space to gardening. Her touching struggles to give up driving, and facing the memories of having to take her own Mother's car away. Her horrific accident where she was spared even a scratch but the fiasco to get her car off the road combined with malfunctioning police radios to her sudden "general physical malaise" suddenly resolved in a cup of "sweet hot tea!"
Sadly to this reader, she settled into life being "the other woman," and takes no accountability for any of these men's failed marriages. I guess when you're in your 90's you find peace where you can.
And then there is Barry. She never married the sap, but now he's old and sick and she's stuck. Poor Barry with his penchant for morphine. She's spot-on with the "humilities of illness." Her non-husband ends up on a catheter when his urinary system goes south...and refuses to use the toilet with a nurse, and saves a Mt. Vesuvius blow-out for her to clean, which she does with detachment.
"She no longer feels the need to ponder human relationships-particularly love affairs."
She claims not to regret being childless, but her story made me sad. She became pregnant at 43 but had a miscarriage, apparently this child's loss in her life nearly killed her, both physically and emotionally. But there was another pregnancy that she terminated "without hesitation or subsequent unhappiness."
She sums up the experience as believing if she'd had a child she would have been a good mother. And she lives in peace because she "can't have the hassle of close involvement...
Ultimately, after 91 years, she concludes a long life is about luck. Who and where you were born, and in the end dissolve into nothingness. Are lives are just interesting.
Book Review: Musings on a life
Summary: 3 Stars
Perhaps it is unwarranted, but when an elderly, intellectual person reviews a life of over ninety-plus years, the expectations are for some profound insights on how to live, on how to come to grips with the nearing end. In this rather whimsical and rambling effort, the author touches briefly on what seems to be almost random aspects of her life. While the book is not superficial, she does not linger long on her subjects. Adding to the vagueness is the lack of concern in locating her story in terms of places, dates, ages, names, or chronology.
For the author, crossing the age of seventy was the most significant milestone in her life, because that is the point at which she "ceased to be a sexual being." Interestingly, she had almost a predisposition for long-running affairs with black men, highly cultured and not necessarily single. She readily admits they were affairs that satisfied needs and status, more than being deep commitments. As sex regrettably ebbed in her life, "other things became more interesting." She points to a better understanding of her atheism, as an example, and how it fits in a Christian society. Unsurprisingly, as a long time editor at a publishing house, she retains a deep interest in books, although novels, with their focus on relationships and escapism, have become less appealing.
The author was born in a well-to-do English family and comments on the advantages of money, good health, and a good education in dealing with old age. She does not pretend to have much to say for those not so advantaged. She has a level of comfort, psychological and otherwise, in her life that she is hopeful will be sustaining for her remaining time. With her background, she has/had the capacity to withstand life's adversities with her only regrets being tendencies towards emotional coldness and a certain amount of laziness in taking initiative.
As the author says, only the one living a life can truly examine it, but it needs to be done honestly. Furthermore, most lives are interesting at some level. But how does one determine whether a life should be or can be captured in a book? There is some question as to how much her life story on a fairly unique track, at least as revealed, will be relevant or informative to most readers.
Book Review: Unmet Expectations
Summary: 3 Stars
I think I let my expectations get in the way of truly enjoying this book. I had read some very positive reviews praising the frankness and honesty of Athill's description of her declining years.
I found the book's so-called frankness to be somewhat boring. It seemed to always come back to her sexual experiences.
Her description of her declining faculties depressed me. Maybe because my own are declining and I'd rather not read about other people's struggles with sore feet, etc. I've got my own sore knees to worry about.
The book jumped around a lot but perhaps that's the way of memoirs. I haven't read that many of them. Nevertheless, I did miss having transitions from one topic to another and being able to see an over-riding theme other than just one person's experience of aging.
It also occurs to me that maybe the experience of the aging process for men and women is essentially different and I just didn't "get" it. Either that or I am just making excuses for not particularly liking a book that others did like.
Book Review: Spunky
Summary: 3 Stars
Memoirs can lead readers to reflect on some of life's big questions through a peek into an individual's recollections of the paths taken. Diana Athill's memoir, Somewhere Towards the End, was written by her at age 91, following fifty years as a literary editor. Her writing is clear and crisp, and she tackles those aspects of life many of us would prefer to avoid, ignore, or just wish would not happen to us. She covers relationships, sex, religion, and health with a dispatch and a way of talking about herself that does not preach to readers. The losses that come with the passage of time need not remove the spunk from life or diminish optimism. The fewer than two hundred pages of Somewhere Towards the End made me feel just fine about whatever the passage of time will bring to my life.
Rating: Three-star (Recommended)
Book Review: Geriatrica
Summary: 2 Stars
Reminiscenses of an eldery and accomplished English women detailing the decline and losses resulting from advanced age. Yes, the writing is good, but the tone is somewhat dreary--not something one would read for pleasure or even for empathetic autobiographical insights.