Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir

As I get older (and closer to Ms. Athill's age), I find that some of the basics of life are more perplexing than I thought they were when I was younger. This memoir was delightful to me because the author is quite candid about her flaws and perceptions, and I found that, really, a lot of what she

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has to say is very relevant. Each chapter is its own secular story or remembrance, so this is not a diary or a full-life memoir. It is more a commentary on aging and how things change the older we get.

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I was disappointed in this book. I was hoping for a little insight as to how the elderly (89 in the writer's case) felt about their life and their eventual death. This woman may have been very successful in her career as an editor but to have affair after affair with married men, citing the relief

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that someone else was "taking care" of the men's daily care and needs and then end up living in a platonic relationship for 40 years with a has-been-lover only to nurse him in his bedridden state...ironic really. But you feel toward the end that she got what she deserved in the end: exactly what she'd avoided her entire life, responsibility and care of another human being.

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Diana Athill’s award winning meditation on growing old takes a conversational tone. Mixing anecdotes from her childhood, young adulthood and middle-age with descriptions of her life as it is now (in her early nineties), she creates a kind of guidebook for all of us who will live and grow old. As

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I read, I immediately thought of a number of family members, particularly women in their sixties, who I could recommend this to. It is not a depressing book (as one might imagine from the subject matter), in fact it can be quite reassuring in the way that Athill explains how she continues to derive pleasure in her life. Although her opinions can at times seem imperious (and self-serving) – particularly when it comes to the infidelities that she has taken part in – there is much to recommend this book.

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Unusual in terms of autobiography because here is less is more. She writes in riffs around a topic rather than just tediously plodding through everything which happened. Shrewd observational stuff.

One of the better memoir books I have read. Diana Athill 89 at the time of this writing is refreshingly frank and very clear witted. She lays it all out on the line and frankly discusses sex, death, relationships, relgion and more including her atheism and interracial relationships. Her charming

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and beautifully written book makes you feel like you would want to be her friend. I enjoyed it very much.

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A charmingly frank woman, proving delightfully that age need not affect one's wit and independent thought.

Well written, honest, and of course wonderful from a 90 year old, but not as interesting as I had hoped, nothing very original either in what she thinks or how she says it. Someone had complained that there was too much sex, but the sex content seemed to me mildly expressed and entirely acceptable.

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Didn't like Ms Athill herself very much - a cold fish, except with regard to her mother. Altogether, not thrilled.

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Another book I wanted to like more than I did. For some reason, I seem to read many books on the end of life. I suppose I'm trying to understand what it's like to lose a parent and what it's like for the person facing the end of life, even if they are not ill. Athill answers these questions. Parts

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of it I found very compelling. She is a strong and compelling woman. What I found lacking was an emotional resonance.

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Diana Athill's memoir is a sparkling and funny look at some of her life and her thoughts about different subjects:infidelity,marriage,religion and friendship. She was 89 at the time of writing this book so her thoughts on old age are especially poignant.

What an amazing woman! A book about getting old - and seeing the world through those eyes applying all the experience of life. A book of honesty and integrity and quiet wit. Can't praise it enough - feels as if I have made a new friend

There are parts of this book that are moving and very insightful, other parts seem to drag. I like that someone wrote about the harsh reality that our existance will end or at best be transformed. I must say Julian Barnes did a better job of it in his memoir Nothing to be Frighten Of. Still Ms.

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Athill is a honest writer that does face her dying with courage and dignity. It was well worth reading

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I read this because it won the 2009 National Book Critics Circle award for autobiography. The author was an editor with a publisher in London till she retired at 75. In the earlier part of the book she tells at length of her sexual life. She never married but took up with, at timee, men married to

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other women and appaently thinks this was omething which was admirable and her readers would want to know about.. In the later part of the book she talks of various interests, and of gardening, driving, and vicissitudes of aging, and some of this was felicitouly done and of interest, but all in all the book did not entrance me.

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Diana Athill is one of the great editors in British publishing. For more than five decades she edited the likes of V. S. Naipaul and Jean Rhys, for whom she was a confidante and caretaker. As a writer, Diana Athill has made her reputation for the frankness and precisely expressed wisdom of her

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memoirs. Now in her ninety-first year, "entirely untamed about both old and new conventions" (Literary Review) and freed from any of the inhibitions that even she may have once had, Athill reflects candidly, and sometimes with great humor, on the condition of being old—the losses and occasionally the gains that age brings, the wisdom and fortitude required to face death. Distinguished by "remarkable intelligence...[and the] easy elegance of her prose" (Daily Telegraph), this short, well-crafted book, hailed as "a virtuoso exercise" (Sunday Telegraph) presents an inspiring work for those hoping to flourish in their later years.

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The relationships and events that shaped the author's life weren't as interesting as the priceless nuggets of wisdom she gleaned from them and shared throughout her book. It was a quick enjoyable read with a lasting impact. Loads of insight.

To me it was plain silly. It is so obvious that life works in terms of species rather than individuals. The individual just has to be born, to develop to the point at which it can procreate, and then to fall away into death to make way for its successors, and humans are no exception whatever they

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may fancy. We have, however, contrived to extend our falling away so much that it is often longer than our development, so what goes on in it and how to manage it is worth considering. Book after book has been written about being young, and even more of them about the elaborate and testing experiences that cluster round procreation, but there is not much on record about falling away. Being well advanced in that process, and just having had my nose rubbed in it by pugs and tree ferns, I say to myself, 'Why not have a go at it?' So I shall.

This is a memoir written by an 88-year-old atheist ex-publisher about what it is like to be old and facing death. Diana Athill accepts that she is too old to get another dog and that she will never see her new tree fern grow into a tree, but apart from that she doesn't go in for regrets. She had an interesting career and lots of lovers and even picked up a surrogate daughter and grand-children along the way, and I like the way she doesn't sugar-coat things and faces up to past bad behaviour.

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Interesting, but not really as interesting as I expected it to be. I think she'd be a fascinating woman to have tea with, though.

This is such a gentle, gentle-womanly piece of writing. She is not an idle gossip and any hint of criticism is handled very tactfully. I held off reading it for quite a while because reviews had made it sound focussed upon a loss of sexuality with age. The book deals with sex very lightly, and is a

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well-rounded consideration of many aspects of growing old and dying. It is a straightforward, unsentimental and philosophical retrospective of life, if a little rambling.

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I really enjoyed this. I'm 72 with asthma and the corianus virus is coming. I have enjoyed my life and am hoping for more time.

Pleasant enough but unessential.

Started out fresh, then lagged a bit and finally, ended well. Description of Athill's memoir about aging (written at age 88)might be a satisfying description of a life. I particularly enjoyed her chapters on her atheism and her reading predilections. I too find (at a much younger age than hers)

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that my interest in reading novels (and watching movies, perhaps for the same reasons) has diminished as I get older, while my pleasure in reading both non-fiction and poetry (Athill doesn't mention poetry)has intensified. In most other respects, my life and point of view differ quite radically from Athill's, so reading her memoir did not illicit spasms of affirmative head-nodding on my part. However, I appreciated her honesty in not trying to make herself appear better, kinder, more loving or selfless than she sees herself as being.

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An interesting memoir that was a bit too distanced from her feelings to really grab me. Remembrances of her life and lovers in a slightly odd dispassionate style. On the other hand, I hope I can write this well if, and when, I'm 89.

Delightful and succint insights and reflections from a woman reaching her late 80s. She has a positive outlook, intentionally so, accepting of the dwindling energy and appetites of age, but finding plenty still to take satisfaction in. If anything, she’s inclined to be a bit complacent or

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indulgent of her lot (smug, she says) but her poised and spirited phrases and descriptions are a joy: arresting, stimulating, and comforting in their graceful and candid delineation of our common humanity. The prose has a lush feel, and yet is ultimately rather thin in that not much really takes hold (as I was able to note on an almost-immediate reread, returning for more depth than was actually to be found). But dipping in to any page will bring pleasure.

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