Alive, Alive Oh!: And Other Things That Matter

by Diana Athill

Overview

Several years ago, Diana Athill accepted that she could no longer live entirely independently, and moved to a retirement home in Highgate. When she had acclimatized, she found herself released from the daily anxieties of caring for her own property, and free to settle into her remaining years. From this vantage point, she reflects on what it feels like to be very old, and on the moments in her long life that have risen to the surface and which sustain her in these last years. What really matters in the end? And after a long life, which memories stand out? As she approaches her 100th year, Athill recalls in sparkling, precise detail the exact layout of the garden of her childhood, a vast and beautiful park attached to a large house; relates with humour, clarity and honesty her experiences of the First and Second World Wars and her trips to Europe as a young woman; and in the remarkable title chapter, describes her pregnancy at the age of forty-three, losing the baby and almost losing her life - and her gratitude and joy on discovering that she had survived. With vivid memories of the past mingled with candid, wise and often very funny reflections on what it's like to be very old, Alive, Alive Oh! reminds us what really matters, and of the joy to be found at every stage of life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783782550
Publisher:	Granta Books
Publication date:	03/31/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	177
Sales rank:	501,529
File size:	380 KB

About the Author

DIANA ATHILL was born in 1917. She helped André Deutsch establish the publishing company that bore his name and worked as an editor for Deutsch for four decades. Athill's distinguished career as an editor is the subject of her acclaimed memoir Stet, which is also published by Granta Books, as are five further volumes of memoirs, Instead of a Letter, After a Funeral, Yesterday Morning, Make Believe, Somewhere Towards the End, a novel, Don't Look at Me Like That, and a collection of letters, Instead of a Book. In January 2009, she won the Costa Biography Award for Somewhere Towards the End, and was presented with an OBE. She lives in London.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

My Grandparents' Garden 7

Post-War 27

'Oh, tell me, Gentle Shepherd, where…': Thoughts on the attempted revolution in Trinidad and Tobago 43

Alive, Alive Oh! 61

This Bit Ought Not to be True 89

The Decision 97

A Life of Luxuries 119

Lessons 131

Beloved Books 143

Dead Right 151

What Is 163

Acknowledgements 167

Editorial Reviews

…Athill has provided us with an energetic follow-up [to Somewhere Towards the End]…More a series of ruminations than a memoir, Alive, Alive Oh!: And Other Things That Matter serves as a companion volume to Somewhere, an invitation to sit a spell with an intractable and witty friend who's pushed even further into what the poet May Sarton termed the "foreign country of old age."

The New York Times Book Review - Roy Hoffman

11/30/2015
Almost 10 years after the publication of Athill’s memoir Somewhere Towards the End, she bestows upon readers another gift of her elegant glimpses back at many of her life’s most memorable moments. In beguiling, evocative prose, she details her nostalgia for growing up on her grandmother’s farm; her harrowing, ambivalent feelings around unexpectedly becoming pregnant in her 40s and living through a miscarriage; and her decision to move into a retirement home, where she discovers that “nothing is more valuable than being free to do whatever you are capable of doing.” After her miscarriage, she’s relieved that she won’t have to tell her mother about the pregnancy, and also that she is alive—she realizes that she loved being alive so much that “not having died was much more important to me by far than losing the child.” Looking back on her life, Athill declares that she is happy, sharing the two valuable lessons she’s learned: steer clear of romanticism, and abhor possessiveness. Athill has a charming and captivating way with a story, and a graceful, plainspoken manner of revealing the humor, gravity, and momentary beauty of a life fully lived. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"Moving and always engaging…The sheer candour with which she writes and the overwhelming sense of a life fully lived are both quite marvelous."

The Bookseller

"Witty, candid. . . . If you haven’t read Athill, and open her latest book expecting serene reflections from a nonagenarian sipping tea in her garden, you’re in for a surprise."

San Francisco Chronicle - Carmela Ciuraru

"Like Athill’s favorite paintings, her essays ‘make you see, when you leave their presence, that everything has become more alive.'"

Salon - Laura Miller

"Enchanting…Diana Athill, 98, still has a few things to teach us about growing old with dignity and humor and grace…Astute and sparkling."

Associated Press - Ann Levin

"So beautifully written and exquisitely detailed. . . . [Athill] mines her memories of a life well-lived and generously lays them out on the page for the rest of the world to enjoy."

Star Tribune - Meganne Fabrega

2015-10-14
Approaching her 98th birthday, the astonishingly vital and fiercely intelligent Athill adds a charming addendum to her previous memoir on aging, Somewhere Towards the End (2009). Following an introduction in which she muses about the pleasures of thinking about past events, people, and places, the author offers 11 essays filled with candid memories and reflections. The first is a fond recollection from the 1920s and 1930s of the garden at Ditchingham Hall (the kitchen garden was "a wonderfully thought-out and maintained fabrication of beauty"), her grandparents' country home in Norfolk, and the second is a look back at the 1940s and 1950s and the pleasures of life in postwar England. What follows are a variety of vivid accounts, the most deeply personal of which tells of her pregnancy in her early 40s, her decision to bear the child, and then the miscarriage that nearly killed her. For readers of a certain age, her decision to give up her independence, move into a home for the elderly, and discover unexpected pleasures there will especially resonate. Whether she is writing about clothes, books, possessions, or relationships, Athill seems always to be completely honest and without unnecessary sentiment. Death does not alarm her—she approves of the sensible, practical way that it is dealt with in her retirement home—and as an atheist, she finds no comfort in the idea of an afterlife. However, as she admitted in her previous memoir on aging, the actual process of dying causes some anxiety. In her final essay here, she allows that one cannot expect an easy dying, but one can still hope for it. Readers can hope that more crisp and thoughtful essays on life, old age, and death will be forthcoming from a centenarian Athill.

Kirkus Reviews