- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (2 Aug 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140291121
- ISBN-13: 978-0140291124
- Product Dimensions: 20.2 x 13.1 x 1.7 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 405,918 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Amazon.co.uk Review
"The time will come in your life when the voice of God will thunder at you from a cloud, 'From this day forth thou shalt not be able to put on thine own socks'". So writes the playwright, novelist and erstwhile QC, John Mortimer. And as a septuagenarian, he is writing from experience. But it's not the effort it takes to put on socks, or the need to use people as props to stop falling over, or the sad fact that one may be compelled to buy a "Decorative Window Film" to prevent against walking into glass doors that Mortimer objects to. "The real trouble with old age", he says, "is it lasts for such a short time". The Summer of a Dormouse is a wickedly funny journal in which Mortimer wryly observes the absurdities of old age. After all, "No one should grow old who isn't ready to appear ridiculous". And Mortimer freely admits he often does. Such as the time he unintentionally pirouetted down some marble steps after getting out of a hotel bathtub and crashed into a set of shelves. "I fell amongst splintering glass and a hailstorm of cotton-wool buds, aware of a torrent of destruction". However, in spite of his partial immobility, failing eyesight and frequent tendency to topple over, Mortimer deals with his increasing decrepitude with formidable fortitude. Even a death threat fails to faze him: "Some one's offering to kill me--why on earth should they bother?" Sharp and dark, The Summer of a Dormouse is an upbeat account of a man not afraid to stare mortality in the face. --Christopher Kelly
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
'Charming, intelligent, cheerful, mellifluous, gossipy and wise. Buy it for Christmas' - Fay Weldon, Mail on Sunday
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Five Stars All Round - A Great Pleasure!,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Summer of a Dormouse: A Year of Growing Old Disgracefully (Audio Cassette)
I thought this account of a year in the elderly John Mortimer's life fascinating and gripping. Consider getting the audio tape as well as or instead of the book to hear the author's own nuances and tone - it adds to the humour. I especially liked the Mortimer's description of being on the board to decide what to put on the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square - Mortimer wanted Dickens, but Dickens had specified in his will that no statues be erected of himself! So they decide, by committee decision of course, to implement that rotating selection of modern art, including that white stone modern sculpture of Jesus that drew the anger of one committee member because that statue was white, and "everyone knew Jesus was black, from Abyssinia." Mortimer throughout is genial and compromising, and so we get, as we must, what get in Trafalgar Square and elsewhere. The description of working with Franco Zeffereli on "Tea With Mussolini" is also grand, as his description of being ingeniously hit up for a handount in Manhattan. The Royal Court Theatre rebuilding is another decision-by-committee experience that Mortimer handles well, and his comments about his family, and life as a boy in a village (he notes that in old age he has seen the return of having groceries delivered to our homes - something his family enjoyed in the 1930's = "Progress," he says) are wistful, funny and sad.Again, consider getting the audio tape for the full effect.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent - Funny, Heartening, Moving and Hard-to-put-down,
This review is from: The Summer of a Dormouse: A Year of Growing Old Disgracefully (Hardcover)
John Mortimer returns to the literary world with this excellent account of 'growing old disgracefully'. He may have moved on from his Rumpole days, but his own brand of ascerbic wit remains - thoroughly recommended.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"From this day forth, thou shalt not be able to put on thine own socks.",
By
This review is from: The Summer of a Dormouse: A Year of Growing Old Disgracefully (Hardcover)
Using this imagined pronouncement from God as an introduction to his third autobiography, author John Mortimer, barrister, playwright, novelist, and creator of the Rumpole series, muses on aging and the fact that time passes far more swiftly in old age than in youth. He expects the rest of his life to pass as quickly as "the summer of a dormouse." More a diary in book form than an autobiography with a controlling theme, Mortimer comments on recent events in his life, jumping from topic to topic, then backing up and revisiting those topics when events change or he learns something new.
The beginning of the book emphasizes his relationship with Franco Zeffirelli, for whom he wrote the screenplay for "Tea with Mussolini." He was fascinated by the casting and filming of that production, and his comments about Judy Dench, Joan Plowright, and Maggie Smith, all Great Ladies of British theatre, who shared billing in the film with the American Cher, add life and spice to the behind the scenes stories, especially when they appear nude at Zeffirelli's pool. He jumps quickly from this to his problems with his own broken leg, followed by leg ulcers that will not heal, and his experiments with a "black box," and electrical treatments which have a healing effect. Soon he is onto the subject of running a campaign to rebuild the Royal Court Theatre, the problems he has had with government financing, with foundations, and with donors. His liberal political goals and his anti-establishment screeds add contemporary British political information to the autobiographical mix, and his reminiscences about growing up with his father, a blind barrister who was carefully tended to by Mortimer's solicitous mother, put his own pre-occupations with the family house and garden into perspective. Unfortunately, his discussion about his father's blindness, the surgeries his father underwent, his homage to his patient and long-suffering mother, and his own problems and surgeries for detached retinas (apparently inherited) are virtually lifted from his previous autobiography, Murderers and Other Friends. His story about visiting Sir John Gielgud with his wife and baby daughter Emily in her "pink carry-cot" is also virtually identical to his previous reminiscence from "Murderers and Other Friends." Though he discussed at length his relationship with playwright Harold Pinter in that book, he sees Pinter in this book and comments as if he's never seen him before! Fascinating for anyone who loves Rumpole and the Mortimer writings, this third "autobiography" is more like a Mortimer reminiscence written for Mortimer himself than it is for a wider audience of Mortimer fans. n Mary Whipple
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