Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography
by P.D. James
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Book Summary Information
Author: P.D. JamesEdition: Paperback
Published: 2001-02-27
ISBN: 0345442121
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Book Reviews of Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography
Book Review: And She Is
Summary: 5 Stars
Samuel Johnson famously said that 'at 77 it is time to be in earnest' and P.D. James is. She has not been a diarist but for this book she forced herself to become one. The book consists of a year's worth of diary with flashbacks and memories of the past. Structuring an autobiography is far more difficult and far more problematic than it may at first appear. Her solution here is certainly novel. Superficially, the book is an account of a year's events--speeches, book tours, lunches, and so on, but ultimately it explores the key events and key individuals of her life, with all the tears and joys attached. She evokes a vivid sense of the war and what it was like to bear and protect infants then; she speaks of her beloved husband's struggles with mental illness, the fact that she was forced to support the family and do so by wending her way through a government career after taking what Americans would think of as a continuing ed program at the City University in London. She is so literate, so polished, and so well educated that it is hard to believe that she lacks a formal college education. Her success as a writer came relatively 'easily', though that is always a relative term. It came early, but it did not come without great labor.
Time to Be in Earnest includes wonderful reflections on the craft of writing and the specific culture of crime writing and interesting anecdotes about such household names as Ruth Rendell and Iris Murdoch. Phyllis James/Baroness James knows everyone and speaks of them honestly and in detail. She also tells us about her cat (named for Johnson's cat, Hodge), which I found more interesting than I expected. I loved her comments on modern culture--on travel, on cell phones, on education, on political correctness, political personages (including the Blairs) and such unexpected pleasures as an account of what it is like to spend the night at Chatsworth. In all of these matters she is scrupulously honest and scrupulously frank. The impact on her of Johnson and of the Jane Austen of the letters as well as the novels is clear.
This is a delightful book and you do not need to be a fan of P.D. James's crime fiction (she would say detective fiction) to enjoy it. It is a very English book in every way, but it is also pure Horatio Alger--relatively poor woman hungry for butter during the war becomes Baroness James of Holland Park and doesn't change a great deal in the process. I had the great pleasure of meeting her once and talking to her for a few minutes. She is absolutely the genuine article--kind, direct, real with a capital R and authentic with a capital A. The book conveys that, without any arrogance and without any pretense. Read it and love her.
Summary of Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography
"At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest," wrote Samuel Johnson, and bestselling crime writer P.D. James took this maxim as a challenge, setting out to record "one year that otherwise might be lost." The result is a fascinating and reflective account, part diary and part memoir, of one very full year of Baroness James's life, interspersed with her memories and intelligent analysis of "what it was like to be born two years after the end of the First World War and to live for seventy-eight years in this tumultuous century." P.D. James grew up in Cambridge, England, between the wars and worked in the home office of the forensic and criminal justice departments, which sparked her interest in that area, though she did not become a published novelist until 1962 with Cover Her Face. She began to write full-time after her "retirement" in 1979, and along the way became a governor of the BBC before taking a seat in the House of Lords in 1991. Time to Be in Earnest is a lucid and penetrative work by one of the most influential figures currently involved with the arts in Britain. James reveals her vast scope for enjoyment, interest, and simply getting on with life (her husband, Connor White, died at the age of 44 in 1964 after years of mental illness), whether it be spending time with her children and grandchildren, musing on the hideous British architectural mistakes of the 1960s, or giving her view of the controversies continually surrounding the running of the BBC. At an age when many people would be considering slowing down, James seems constantly on the move, recording her day-to-day existence and her past with an alert and judicious eye. "I am sustained by the magnificent irrationality of faith," she states. "I inhabit a different body, but I can reach back over nearly 70 years and recognise her as myself. Then I walked in hope--and I do so still." --Catherine Taylor, Amazon.co.ukOn the day she turned seventy-seven, internationally acclaimed mystery writer P. D. James embarked on an endeavor unlike any other in her distinguished career: she decided to write a personal memoir in the form of a diary. Over the course of a year she set down not only the events and impressions of her extraordinarily active life, but also the memories, joys, discoveries, and crises of a lifetime. This enchantingly original volume is the result.
Time to Be in Earnest offers an intimate portrait of one of most accomplished women of our time. Here are vivid, revealing accounts of her school days in Cambridge in the 1920s and '30s, her happy marriage and the tragedy of her husband's mental illness, and the thrill of publishing her first novel, Cover Her Face, in 1962. As she recounts the decades of her exceptional life, James holds forth with wit and candor on such diverse subjects as the evolution of the detective novel, her deep love of the English countryside, her views of author tours and television adaptations, and her life-long obsession with Jane Austen. Wise and frank, engaging and graceful, this "fragment of autobiography" will delight and surprise P. D. James's admirers the world over.
In 1997, P. D. James decided to undertake a book unlike any she had written before: a personal memoir in the form of a diary. Structured as the diary of a single year, it roams back and forth through time, illuminating James's extraordinary, sometimes painful and sometimes joyful life." "Here, interwoven with reflections on her writing career and the craft of crime novels, are vivid accounts of episodes in her own past - of school days in 1920s and 1930s Cambridge ... of the war and the tragedy of her husband's madness ... of her determined struggle to support a family alone.
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