Noted British author and journalist David Pryce-Jones has written a memoir unlike almost any other memoir I've ever read. Maybe that because he has lived a life unlike most others. "Fault Lines", originally published in 2016, is the story of two families and the son produced by those families.
David Pryce-Jones spends much of the book talking about his ancestors. The Pryce-Jones family was Christian and thoroughly English and Welsh. His mother's family - the Fould-Springers - were Austrian, French, nominally Jewish, and fairly neurotic. They had intermarried with the Rothschild and owned several grand houses in Austria, France, and Hungary. They were high livers; money seemed to come from their many investments. David's mother was one of four children of Mitzi Fould - who ran her family with an iron fist. No marriages took place without her approval, though she married two men who were bisexual, as was David's father.
The Fault Lines of Pryce-Jones life ran along religious, economic, and sexual lines. His mother's family were Jewish by birth, but most seemed to flee their faith by intermarriage. Of course, we're talking about Europe in the first half of the 20th century, when being Jewish was often a cause for worry about their very lives. Pryce-Jones writes about members of the family and others associated with them who were murdered in the camps.
Pryce-Jones' writes about being trapped in France after the "Phoney War" was replaced by the German sweep through the Low Lands and France. He was tended to by his nanny; his parents were in other places, safer places. Somehow young David and the nanny make it out of Vichy France with the help from others. The rest of his life seems to be one of relative normality, compared to what (and who) had came before.
I'm glad I was reading the eversion of Pryce-Jones' memoir because I kept flipping between Wikipedia and my Kindle app. His book is a juicy and fun read.
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