Literary Review - December 2005 / January 2006

Page 15

DIARIES&MEMOIRS

together, reading, speaking or teaching on creative writing courses’. Bernice always gave strictly practical advice: she taught self-discipline. ‘To write a novel you must sit down and stay sitting.’ But you need imagination and lunacy too – both, she says, unteachable. Beryl Bainbridge believes that if Bernice had been happier, she would have had no need to write. As it was,

P HILIP W OMACK

DADAIST DOGTRAINING

S OMEONE L IKE M E : T ALES FROMA B ORROWED C HILDHOOD

★By Miles Kington (Hodder Headline 343pp £16.99)

T RUTHANDMEMORY have a shifting relationship. At a talk about Duff Cooper’s diaries, I asked John Julius Norwich if there was any truth in a Clive James poem about his mother. It asserted, among other things, that Diana Cooper had been escorted into Paris by two dozen Spitfires, and that she carried a phial of poison ‘Against the day there was nothing left to live for’. ‘Absolute rubbish,’ he thundered from the stage. And then, ‘Oh no, wait, my daughter is waving her hand.’ She had left London with an aerial bodyguard; but the poison was a piece of poetic embroidery, his daughter said. How easily a legend springs up; how quickly the world re-edits itself as the real and the not-real weave in and out of each other. Everybody, consciously or not, retells stories to make them better. It is a habit which is particularly apparent in writers, and in none more so than the autobiographer. Miles Kington has, in this rich, convoluted and humorous set of memoirs, taken it a step further. Even the title is unreliable. It is not, as one of Kington’s neighbours suggested, a plea for friendship. It refers to the subject of the book – a person who is not quite Miles Kington, in a family not quite like his own. His family consists of a father who finds the world constantly surprising, a mother who practises dying, a theatrical brother called Ralph and the young, observant Miles. The book begins before Miles is born, and runs in a series of glorious, glowing vignettes until he rattles off to university. There is no real sense of the development of Miles as a person, since he appears, even in the womb, to have the same way of looking at the world as he does when he is grown-up – questioning the absurdity of life and words. But this does not matter, since each chapter is a Saki-like snapshot which is whole in itself. Kington’s satirical eye revels in inversion – anthumous ceremonies to celebrate people before they die being a

her twenty-five novels brought her fame, fortune, films, the Booker Prize, and an enthusiastic following. She was beginning to think about her next novel when she had a stroke and died last October. As Joan Didion says, ‘Life changes fast. Life changes in an instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.’ To order these books, see order form on page 78

typical example. He delights in the strangeness of everyday conversation: ‘You shouldn’t use children as shuttlecocks,’ said Father. ‘It’s not cricket. You shouldn’t move the goalposts.’ His dialogue is sharp and fast – most of the scenes revolve around arguments between the family members. One of these arguments concerns how to train their dog, Bonnie. Miles believes that dogs should just be taught the basic commands – sit, stay and come. But Ralph, the flamboyant older brother, is all for teaching him tricks. Their father asks them to demonstrate what they have taught Bonnie. Miles’s commands go without a hitch. But when Ralph asks Bonnie to come, she sits; she stands up when asked to stay, and comes when asked to sit. ‘A total failure!’ says the father. ‘Not exactly,’ says Ralph. ‘It’s an act of Dadaism ... What I just demonstrated was an obedience which sounded and looked like an act of extreme disobedience.’ A wonderful piece of trickery, and there are many more like it. To order this book at £13.59, see order form on page 78

FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE FOR WRITERS

Grants and Pensions are available to published authors of several works who are in financial difficulties due to personal or professional setbacks. Applications are considered in confidence by the General Committee every month.

For further details please contact: Eileen Gunn General Secretary The Royal Literary Fund 3 Johnson’s Court, London EC4A 3EA

Tel 0207 353 7159 Email: egunnrlf@globalnet.co.uk www.rlf.org.uk

Registered Charity no 219952

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LITERARY REVIEW Dec 2005 / Jan 2006