Claire Tomalin is the author of eight highly acclaimed biographies, including Thomas Hardy and Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, which won the 2002 Whitbread Book of the Year Award. She has previously won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography, the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Hawthornden Prize, the NCR Book Award for Non-Fiction, and the Whitbread Biography Award. Educated at Cambridge University, she served as literary editor of the New Statesman and the Sunday Times (London). Claire Tomalin lives in London and is married to the playwright Michael Frayn.
“[An] intelligent and humane book…There is genuine appeal in
watching this indomitable woman continue to chase the next draft of
herself. After a while, the pages turn themselves. Tomalin has a
biographer’s gift for carefully husbanding her resources, of
consistently playing out just enough string. When she needs to, she
pulls that string tight.” —Dwight Garner, The New York
Times
“Tomalin brings to her memoir a pro’s practiced ability at
threading the personal, the professional and the contextual with
details that sing… [She offers] a wonderful evocation of London’s
vibrant literary culture of the 1960s and ’70s…An elegant profile
in courage and fortitude.” —Washington Post
“[A LIFE OF MY OWN] navigates artfully between tantalizing
revelations and unobtrusive elisions. I read the memoir twice in an
effort to deconstruct how Ms. Tomalin does it, leading us into her
nooks and crannies and then firmly closing the curtain at some
point, but literary ingenuity of this caliber is always hard to pin
down…The pleasures of reading this book are many…I hesitate to call
this book enchanting because Ms. Tomalin’s life is strewn with
tragedy…but it is certainly an exceptional account, daunting and
inspiring at the same time, written with no end of poignancy, humor
and perspective.” —Wall Street Journal
“In this memoir as in her acclaimed biographies, Tomalin lets the
telling of a story reveal its own truth, unmarked by the moralizing
of the soapbox. And what a story it is.” —Christian Science
Monitor
“[Tomalin] is a master craftswoman, and it’s a thrill to see her
prose and capacity for moving storytelling turned on her own life…
If it leads you to read some of her biographies (Jane Austen is a
favorite), you’ll be better off.”—Vogue.com
“An arresting look at a professional life inextricably entwined
with the lifelong personal concerns of a woman who is also a wife,
daughter, and mother…A quiet book, beautifully told with both
restraint and generosity of spirit.” —BookPage
“An extraordinarily candid autobiography…This is an elegant,
significant book.”—Kirkus Reviews
“[A] captivating and thorough memoir. Tomalin sets out to describe
her “experience of the world”…a gracious, inspiring look at her
family, colleagues, and friends.”—Publishers Weekly (starred
review)
Ask a Question About this Product More... |