ELISA SEGRAVE is the author of The Diary of a Breast, about her battle with cancer, and the novel Ten Men (both published by Faber.) She writes for many newspapers and magazines, including the London Review of Books, the Guardian, the Independent and The Lady.
'This combines intimate family memoir with extensive material about
the code-breaking work at Bletchley Park, at which her mother
excelled.’
'This compelling memoir offers a fascinating window onto the
intense, sexually liberated world of wartime London and postwar
ruined Germany. It is also an impressively honest, bruised account
of a woman who finds herself face to face with a dead mother she
realises she has never seen clearly before.’
'Segrave's latest is a pignant family memoir, uncovered wen she
found a cache of her mother's wartime diaries in the attic. The
author provides her own sharp commentary on extracts from the
diary, so present and past combine in a wonderfully evocative
way.'
'This combines intimate family memoir with extensive material about
the code-breaking work at Bletchley Park, at which her mother
excelled.’'This compelling memoir offers a fascinating window onto
the intense, sexually liberated world of wartime London and postwar
ruined Germany. It is also an impressively honest, bruised account
of a woman who finds herself face to face with a dead mother she
realises she has never seen clearly before.’'A fascinating glimpse
into a lost world of upper-class privilege and the dubious
happiness it brings. It explores the complex and
contradictory feelings of a daughter towards her mother, and the
surprising effect of war on a young woman who found she was
suddenly necessary to her country, and who rose to the occasion in
a remarkable way. A riveting read.'‘The Girl from Station X is
really two books in one, both of them riveting and sad and full of
surprises. Certainly the reader will close this book moved by
Anne’s youthful courage and brio, and what became of it. Segrave’s
story has wider resonance, of course, in that all our mothers have
unknown lives, their own secret hopes and fears. We who are mothers
have secrets from our children, too.’‘Perceptive, tender biography.
As an intelligently unorthodox diarist in her own right, Elisa is
enthralled by the experience of ‘gradually uncovering a woman I had
never expected to know so well.’ ‘A fascinating snapshot of a
young woman thrown unexpectedly into an irrevocably changing world.
The real strength of this book though is not as a wartime adventure
but as a detailed, sometimes uncomfortable analysis of a
mother-daughter relationship. It’s a book which is sometimes
uncomfortable to read, but will have changed its writer’s life for
the better.’‘The diary is pure gold. If only life could be so rich,
without the war.’'A rich repository of missed and mixed messages –
the natural reticence of parents and children to reveal their
private lives to each other, the daughter's discovery of
documentation, her mother's forgetting. Perhaps, when it
comes to secrets, you neither discover nor keep exactly the ones
you intend.''Segrave's latest is a pignant family memoir, uncovered
wen she found a cache of her mother's wartime diaries in the attic.
The author provides her own sharp commentary on extracts from the
diary, so present and past combine in a wonderfully evocative way.'
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
