My Animal Life: A Memoir
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'A wise and beautiful book about what it feels like to be alive - I really loved it' --Zadie Smith
'Often joyous; infinitely wise; passionate and poised, this is a book you ll want to sit in silence with and hug to yourself - then start again.' --Daily Mail 28th July 2011
'A fine, honest, complex portrait of an artist's mind' Michele Roberts, Independent 'Read this vivid, minutely observed memoir' Sinclair McKay, Telegraph 'Fresh and funny - with a zest for living that bounces off the page' Psychologies 'Every word strikes like a hammer on an anvil, throwing off sizzling sparks' Bidisha, The f word 'It is a testament to Gee's skill with structure, her lightness of touch and her honesty, particularly about the most painful episodes, that she has fashioned this account of a fundamentally satisfying and happy writer's life into such a page-turner.' Melissa Benn, New Statesman --Reviews
'Exceptionally interesting and brave - a wonderful book' Claire Tomalin 'Highly recommended for all aspiring writers' Bernardine Evaristo 'Maggie Gee writes with such courage and wit. This is a vivid portrait of a woman finding her way through the maze of class ridden post war England, the 60's, feminism and how to be a mother and a writer.' Diana Melly 'Observant, honest and sensitively-written, it will be required reading for all admirers of Maggie Gee's fiction. I greatly enjoyed it.' Michael Holroyd A beautifully wrought, perceptive and uplifting memoir'. The Good Book Guide --Reviews
'Often joyous; infinitely wise; passionate and poised, this is a book you ll want to sit in silence with and hug to yourself - then start again.' --Daily Mail 28th July 2011
'A fine, honest, complex portrait of an artist's mind' Michele Roberts, Independent 'Read this vivid, minutely observed memoir' Sinclair McKay, Telegraph 'Fresh and funny - with a zest for living that bounces off the page' Psychologies 'Every word strikes like a hammer on an anvil, throwing off sizzling sparks' Bidisha, The f word 'It is a testament to Gee's skill with structure, her lightness of touch and her honesty, particularly about the most painful episodes, that she has fashioned this account of a fundamentally satisfying and happy writer's life into such a page-turner.' Melissa Benn, New Statesman --Reviews
'Exceptionally interesting and brave - a wonderful book' Claire Tomalin 'Highly recommended for all aspiring writers' Bernardine Evaristo 'Maggie Gee writes with such courage and wit. This is a vivid portrait of a woman finding her way through the maze of class ridden post war England, the 60's, feminism and how to be a mother and a writer.' Diana Melly 'Observant, honest and sensitively-written, it will be required reading for all admirers of Maggie Gee's fiction. I greatly enjoyed it.' Michael Holroyd A beautifully wrought, perceptive and uplifting memoir'. The Good Book Guide --Reviews
Product Description
How do you become a writer, and why? Maggie Gee's journey starts a long way from the literary world in a small family in post-war Britain,. At seventeen, Maggie goes, a lamb to the slaughter, to university. From the 1960s onwards she lives the defining events of her generation: the coming of the Pill and sexual freedom, tremors in the British layer-cake of class and race. In the 1980s, Maggie finally gets published, falls in love, marries and has a daughter - but for the next three decades and beyond, she survives, and sometimes thrives, by writing. This frank, bold memoir dares to explore the big questions: success and failure, sex, death and parenthood - our animal life.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I just read this in one sitting and my mind is fizzing with excitement about this extraordinarily brave autobiography, social history, family history, and intimate (sex!) details. I have to admit that my own "light cone" (google that!) is congruent with Maggie's: post-war Britain, grammar school, Oxford undergraduate in the mid 1960s, all the confusion of womens' lib. Here is a jewel of a book in which the way we lived back then (1948 - 1968) is told with such feeling of love, and of the joy of simply existing. As a historian of astronomy, I admire Maggie's reflection that our home planet existed four billion years before our birth and it will survive as a planet for four billion years after our death. So we are here (yes, that includes you Dear Reader) for an instant between two flaps of wings somewhere in the cosmos. So what's it all about? Maggie (she prefers that name to the Margaret her parents gave her) is deeply moving (and Reader note that I am a male ...) on the importance of love within the family and our friendships. Her penultimate chapter is titled "What is a soul?" It is inspirational for anyone who was brought up in the Christian faith but is now a non-believer.
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I really enjoyed the mixture of genres in the book, the stories and reflections, the tangents, the politics and the intimacy - the hymns to love. It should be compulsory reading for all aspirant writers as well as any historian wanting to understand the changes for women in the latter part of the twentieth century but also for anyone who searches for honesty and truth about the human condition. Gee writes with a great rhythm and revels in language and the book bubbles over with her trademark clear observations and humour. A delightful and insightful book.
Format:Hardcover
I really enjoyed this book. I was immediately sucked in to the story of the author's family, which was very poignantly told, especially the parts about her father. What was really interesting was her very honest look at her career--and when things started going wrong for her (she switches publishers, her agent drops her, she gets a new agent that believes in her, but then he goes bust)--which lasts for a few years (!!). Everything eventually turns out happily...but it's very instructive, very harrowing look at one writer's career.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
So interesting and true I could not put it down.
This autobiography is so interesting and true I could not put it down. Odd because I have not read a single one of her novels, and probably won't. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Ransen Owen
Wonderful first page... then stop reading
After a brilliant - nay, inspiring - first page, this quickly turns mawkish and maudlin. NB: I didn't get more than a couple of chapters in. I just gave up in despair.
Published 5 months ago by Heliotrope
Sorry
I had listed to Maggie Gee on Radio Four promoting this book when it was first published and thought it sounded interesting. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Mikeskyte
Dull!
I read this at one sitting.
What hits you is the whimical, school style which I found extremely tedious. Read more
What hits you is the whimical, school style which I found extremely tedious. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Velvet
A wonderfully readable book
Another author's autobiography might have portrayed a youth of unremitting happiness, sunlit tennis courts, dances at the yacht club after regattas, parents (if alluded to at all)... Read more
Published 21 months ago by James Shelby Tucker Jr.
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