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Most reviewed: Somewhere Towards the End

14.01.08

Diana Athill provided plenty of column inches last weekend, with the latest instalment of her memoirs the most reviewed on the national newspaper's literary pages.

Athill's Somewhere Towards the End (Granta) mostly united reviewers in their admiration for the 90-year-old author and her attitude to life and death. Val Hennessy, writing in the Daily Mail, enthused: "I, for one, hope that I am able to retain as much zest and passion for life as the wonderful Diana Athill". Hennessy believed that Athill’s book is "entirely lacking in the usual regrets, nostalgia and Hovis-ad recollections of old-timers. It is a little literary gem, penned by a marvellous, feisty old character, whom, quite honestly, I’d just love to have as my grandmother".

In the Guardian, Katharine Whitehorn praised the way Athill deals with death. "Few books on the subject manage to be amusing," she wrote. "But this one does... Her shameless honesty about this, as about everything else, is invigorating, cheerful even." Lara Feigel in the Observer agreed that Athill "approaches the subject [of death] with such verve that it becomes, triumphantly, a book about life" and found the book "a delight to read, because of Athill’s spare, elegant prose", while Jeremy Lewis, in the Mail on Sunday, wrote of her "breezy, no-nonsense manner" and concluded that the book "both inspires and entertains".

D J Taylor was a bit more ambivalent in the Independent on Sunday. "Its lack of self-aggrandisement, even of very much in the way of personal myth-making, is quite deliberate, and the tone of the modest self-deprecation clangs in the air like so many church bells," he wrote. But Clare Colvin, in the Independent, spoke for most when she said that "one can only wish that Diana Athill’s resilience continues to sustain her and there may be another memoir".

 

Most reviewed (Weekend of 11th to 13th January)

Somewhere Towards the End by Diana Athill
(Granta 9781862079847 £12.99)
"What a treasure" Daily Mail
"I doubt if this will be her last book. I certainly hope not" Guardian
"A remarkable testimony" Mail on Sunday
"A delight to read" Observer
"Vive la Athill!" Times

Earls of Paradise by Adam Nicolson
(HarperPress 9780007240524 £25)
"Beautifully written, subtle, passionate, questioning, mind-altering and wise" Daily Mail
"Wonderful, lyrical and contemplative" Guardian
"Brilliant" Mail on Sunday
"A rich, informative and original book, marred only by some touches of slightly hectic over-writing" Sunday Telegraph
"At times the author is unenecessarily obscure" Daily Telegraph

The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa
(Faber 9780571234103 £17.99)
"[Vargas Llosa} does it brilliantly" Daily Telegraph
"A compelling narrative that brims with compassion" Observer
"There remains a hole at the heart of the novel" Daily Mail
"The love story never develops a convincing heartbeat" Guardian
"Deeply dissatisfying" Times

Crusaders by Richard T Kelly
(Faber 9780571228065 £14.99)
"Extraordinary state-of-the-nation novel" Financial Times
"Never less than entertaining" Times
"Drawbacks are more than compensated for by the breadth and precision of the author’s portrait of the northeast" Sunday Times
"Prose with something like a death wish" Observer

Media Press Diana Athill Somewhere Towards the End

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