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Family romance : a love story
Lanchester, John.
Adult Nonfiction CT787.L35 L35 2007
From Publishers' Weekly:
In his first memoir, novelist Lanchester investigates how his parents' life stories shaped him as a writer. Born in Hamburg, Germany, raised in Asia and educated in England, he is an only child of an international banker, whose transcontinental origins are equally difficult to categorize, and an ex-nun from Western Ireland, whose former life in the cloister remains a mystery throughout his childhood. When Lanchester was 21, his father died of a heart attack soon after retiring from decades of unfulfilling "wage slavery," causing Lanchester to reconsider his own career path. Years later, as he settles funeral arrangements for his mother, both her name and birth date come into question-a shocking revelation that drives much of the narrative. From old letters, photographs, journal entries and interviews with family members, Lanchester pieces together the truth: that after she left the convent, she assumed a false identity and lied about her age to convince Lanchester's father to marry her (she claimed to be 32 when she was in fact nearly 40). Of interest to Lanchester fans, the events prefigured in his novel Fragrant Harbor are explained here. While Lanchester's parentage and transient childhood in the "hybrid, postcolonial-to-capitalist bubble" are far from ordinary, his insight into the nature of families, their secrets and their sacrifices strike universal chords in this lovingly told account of how one storyteller came to be. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
From Library Journal:
London-based author Lanchester's (The Debt to Pleasure) family, particularly his mother, kept secrets better than most. Like most children, Lanchester believed himself to be the center of the universe; he also believed that his parents' reticence about their pasts was the natural order. Only at his mother's death did he learn her date of birth, the name her parents gave her, and the guilt she'd carried for years over the ways she'd deceived her husband, son, and siblings. This is Lanchester's attempt to reconstruct his parents' lives from the time they met until his mother's death. Through alternating narratives, he examines the ways in which each of his parents was encouraged to subvert emotional truths. In researching and tracing his parents' history, Lanchester comes to understand how his parents protected him, sacrificing dreams of their own to insure their son's future. Poignant, interesting, and artfully written; recommended for public and academic libraries with large memoir collections.-Pam Kingsbury, Univ. of North Alabama, Florence (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Lanchester, John.
Adult Nonfiction CT787.L35 L35 2007
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From Publishers' Weekly:
In his first memoir, novelist Lanchester investigates how his parents' life stories shaped him as a writer. Born in Hamburg, Germany, raised in Asia and educated in England, he is an only child of an international banker, whose transcontinental origins are equally difficult to categorize, and an ex-nun from Western Ireland, whose former life in the cloister remains a mystery throughout his childhood. When Lanchester was 21, his father died of a heart attack soon after retiring from decades of unfulfilling "wage slavery," causing Lanchester to reconsider his own career path. Years later, as he settles funeral arrangements for his mother, both her name and birth date come into question-a shocking revelation that drives much of the narrative. From old letters, photographs, journal entries and interviews with family members, Lanchester pieces together the truth: that after she left the convent, she assumed a false identity and lied about her age to convince Lanchester's father to marry her (she claimed to be 32 when she was in fact nearly 40). Of interest to Lanchester fans, the events prefigured in his novel Fragrant Harbor are explained here. While Lanchester's parentage and transient childhood in the "hybrid, postcolonial-to-capitalist bubble" are far from ordinary, his insight into the nature of families, their secrets and their sacrifices strike universal chords in this lovingly told account of how one storyteller came to be. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
From Library Journal:
London-based author Lanchester's (The Debt to Pleasure) family, particularly his mother, kept secrets better than most. Like most children, Lanchester believed himself to be the center of the universe; he also believed that his parents' reticence about their pasts was the natural order. Only at his mother's death did he learn her date of birth, the name her parents gave her, and the guilt she'd carried for years over the ways she'd deceived her husband, son, and siblings. This is Lanchester's attempt to reconstruct his parents' lives from the time they met until his mother's death. Through alternating narratives, he examines the ways in which each of his parents was encouraged to subvert emotional truths. In researching and tracing his parents' history, Lanchester comes to understand how his parents protected him, sacrificing dreams of their own to insure their son's future. Poignant, interesting, and artfully written; recommended for public and academic libraries with large memoir collections.-Pam Kingsbury, Univ. of North Alabama, Florence (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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