What matters in the end? In the final years of life, which memories stand out? Writing from her retirement home in Highgate, London, as she approaches her 100th year, Diana Athill recalls in sparkling detail the moments in her life which sustain her. With vivid memories of the past mingled with candid, wise and often very funny reflections on the experience of being very old, Alive, Alive Oh! reminds us of the joy and richness to be found at every stage of life.
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. She is the author of eight volumes of memoirs - Stet, Instead of a Letter, After a Funeral, Yesterday Morning, Make Believe, Somewhere Towards the End, Alive, Alive Oh!, A Florence Diary - a collection of letters, Instead of a Book, and a novel, Don't Look At Me Like That, all published by Granta, as well as a collection of short stories, Midsummer Night in the Workhouse (Persephone Books). 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.
Title: Alive, Alive Oh!: And Other Things that Matter
Author: Athill, Diana
ISBN: 9781783787418
Binding:
Publisher: Granta Books
Publication Date: 2022-06-02
Number of Pages: 176
Weight: 0.1200 kg
Athill's signature is precise, crisp phrasing of the kind that has the reader scrabbling for something with which to underline it... Full of life in the shadow of death -- Caroline Criado-Perez * Observer *
A gloriously wise and knowing collection of memories... [written] with her usual clarity, frankness and unsentimentality -- Danuta Kean * Independent on Sunday *
A vivid sensual apprehension of physical pleasure [...] informs the best writing in this book * Evening Standard *
[This book] contains [Athill's] often moving and always engaging reflections on what really matters as you face the final curtain...The sheer candour with which she writes and the overwhelming sense of a life fully lived are both quite marvellous * Bookseller *
Astonishingly vital and fiercely intelligent... Athill seems always to be completely honest and without unnecessary sentiment * Kirkus Reviews *
Prodigious diarist Diana Athill looks back with her usual mix of spike and spark on a formidable life * Independent *
Infused with joie de vivre -- Lucy Scholes * Independent *
A series of amusing anecdotes * Irish Mail on Sunday *
The remarkable story of her outwardly conventional life * Daily Telegraph *
Abundant, earthly and spiritual -- Book of the Week * Guardian *
Full of clear fresh air and bright distance -- Open Book, Radio 4
There are... many treasures in this heterogeneous cabinet of curiosities * Financial Times *
Jam-packed with joie de vivre * Psychologies *
[She] bathes us in lush imagery... If I'm making a mountain out of an Athill, it's because the author doesn't merely beckon you in for a sit-down and a cuppa; she springs a back panel to her mind and guides you down the thought paths inside - some dark, others dappled, all converging confidently on the things that truly matter in our lifetimes * Washington Post *
Wise, candid and all-round remarkable, Athill reflects on being in her nineties. She touches on her childhood, memories of men, the delights of being in a home and much more. * Woman & Home *
Diana Athill reflects with a beautiful frankness on the pleasures and pains of a life very well lived. Splendid, and even more splendid * Sainsbury's Magazine *
