Lost Years: A Memoir 1945 - 1951

Description

Christopher Isherwood is best known for publishing at least two minor classics, Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin. His first volume of diaries, published in 1996, also met with rave reviews, and the memoir about his struggle with his sexuality, Christopher and his Kind, was also highly praised. Set against these, it must be said that these Lost Years 1945-1951, re-created from memory and scraps of paper, are rather desultory and unsatisfying, and will tend to appeal to die-hard Isherwood fans rather than the general reader. Nevertheless, they do contain some good nuggets: a meeting with Georgia O'Keefe, described as "that sturdy old weather-beaten cedar root"; and there is an amusing moment when an inebriated Isherwood ticks off Greta Garbo for "arrogance, affectation and egomania". The other undeniable virtue of these memoirs is their searing honesty, both in matters sexual (random couplings, with "upwards of four hundred men", frankly described), and as regards the difficult and temperamental character of the writer himself. --Christopher Hart