Quicksands: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Sybille Bedford (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 10, 2005

Beginning in 1956 with the publication of A Legacy, the highly acclaimed Sybille Bedford has narrated-in fiction and nonfiction-what has been by turns her sensuous, harrowing, altogether remarkable life. In this memoir, her first new book in over ten years, she provides the moving culmination to an epic personal story that takes readers from the Berlin of World War I, to the artists' set on the C™te d'Azur of the 1920s, through lovers, mentors, seducers, and friends, from genteel yet shabby poverty to settled comfort in London's West End. Whether evoking the simple sumptuousness of a home-cooked meal, or tracing the heartrending outline of an intimate betrayal, she offers both "a deliciously evoked return to worlds" (John Fowles), and spellbinding reflections on how history imprints itself on private lives.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This passionate memoir reflects a sharp, incisive interiority and is written in a style that's even more lyrical and engaging than the style that propelled Bedford into the literary world with her first book, Sudden View, in 1953. Mentored by Aldous Huxley (she later wrote his definitive biography), raised in a Europe struggling to retain and later regain its soul, Bedford (b. 1911) crossed paths with many compelling characters in the years during, between and after the world wars, including a few close to Hitler and to the Fascists. Her detailed autobiography is also a memoir of the evolution of an author, and Bedford writes as movingly of 9/11 as she does of the occupation and liberation of Europe. Bedford counters the perils of political darkness with the first flushes of romantic passions, and, throughout, describes the landscape of her world: her youth in the countrysides of Europe, and her adulthood in London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Florence and New York. Her eye and ear for the ever-changing and challenging world in which she has lived moves her seamlessly from one era to the next. It's heady stuff, no less so for Bedford's ruminative style, her introspection and insight. Agent, Kim Witherspoon. (Apr.)

From Booklist

Born in pre-World War I Germany and raised in Italy, England, and France, Bedford made her literary debut in 1953 with A Visit to Don Otavio, acclaimed by critics as one of the finest travel books of the twentieth century. Her distinguished dossier also includes coverage of criminal trials (from Auschwitz to Jack Ruby) and a much-heralded biography of her mentor, Aldous Huxley. This memoir--her first book in 10 years--offers insight into the woman behind the writing, from her struggles penning prose (striving for what Hemingway called the "one true sentence") to her colorful collection of literary colleagues and friends (including Truman Capote, Eudora Welty, and a German baroness once linked to Francisco Franco). One of Britain's nine Companions of Literature (V. S. Naipaul and Harold Pinter are fellow honorees), Bedford describes her life as "intermittent rushes with the catastrophic events of the century and a largely unharmed continuance of my existence as an individual, freer than many. By the grace of chance." Bedford goes a bit overboard on details in this otherwise lively account of a literary life. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint; Export Ed edition (May 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582431698
• ISBN-13: 978-1582431697
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,542,593 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A disappointment, July 15, 2005

By 

J. Marren "jtm497" (Glen Ridge, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Quicksands: A Memoir (Hardcover)

I had eagerly awaited "Quicksands," undoubtedly the last of this wonderful writer's books, given her advanced age, but sadly I was disappointed. Bedford's novels, which I have read, are autobiographical, despite her disclaimers, but I didn't realize how true to life they were until reading her memoir. Bedford lived an erratic, charmed, difficult life, part of the European artistic generation between the wars, when one could exist for long periods of time on the generosity of friends and move relatively freely from country to country. But Bedford's memoir feels removed from her life, in a way her vivid novels are not. "Jigsaw's" characters reappear--her father and mother, Oriane, Issa, Allessandro--but she observes them from afar, and they feel flat to me. She assumes the reader knows a lot already from her novels, so some incidents are briefly and cryptically covered in a way that without prior knowledge they are meaningless. An example is the story of Rosie, whose lover was a famous English jurist who secretely led a double life for many years. Bedford covers this emotional, painful, amazing story in a page and a half for the sole purpose of finally revealing the jurist's name, but without the vivid background from her novel the revelation has little impact. "Quicksands" is leading me back to the novels I haven't yet read--she's an exquisite writer. Try "Jigsaw" for the real story of this amazing woman's life.

17 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Quicksilver, June 5, 2005

By 

Christian Schlect (Yakima, Washington/USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Quicksands: A Memoir (Hardcover)

A very good writer tells of her unconventional past in Europe, with the memories harvested mainly from the time between the two great wars. Ms. Bedford omits the retelling of many episodes covered in her previous books (none of which I have read) and assumes the reader knows more of history and twentieth century literature than is probably true of most current readers. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book and admired its many "true" sentences.