I've been flipping back and forth between Elizabeth Jane Howard's The Light Years and her memoir, Slipstream. I'm not sure which I am enjoying more, as they are equally compelling to read. I've been trying to decide which character in the novel is most like EJH, but she used so many of her own and her family's experiences and personalities, they come out all over in the novel. At the moment I'm leaning mostly towards the character of Louise, the oldest Cazalet grandchild. Howard obviously wrote what she knew, and it is fascinating to read both fact and fiction side by side.
Elizabeth was the eldest of two children, and the only daughter. She was close to her father and fond of her grandfather but had issues with her mother who gave up a career as a ballerina to marry. EJH was taught at home after a none-too successful few years spent at a proper school where she was bullied incessantly. Her upbringing and family life was on the bohemian side, perhaps not surprising for the era she was raised--the 1920s and 30s. She had no aspirations to become a writer but wanted desperately to become an actress and perform on the stage.
I'm only up to her teenage years, and it's been revealed that she had a troubled childhood. I don't want to give away details, however, as this is a book I think I can easily recommend even if you haven't read any of her novels. I do want to share a passage that I really appreciated.
"Then I learned needlework--mostly embroidery--with Great-aunt May. She was fat, arthritic and, of course, phenomenally old, with short, straggling white hair and joyous blue eyes. She lived with a Siamese cat, and a bony, witchlike woman called Frances who managed to have unsatisfactory relations with this world and the next, and who cooked for her. Her room was always boiling hot, but she didn't observe it, and wore gigantic blue cardigans she knitted herself--but she was a beautiful needlewoman. She taught me how to frame a piece of silk and transfer the design by pricking with pins and painting through the holes on the silk with a tiny brush; to do gold and silver thread work; to make simple kinds of lace and much else. She scorned ready-made designs, and drew--whatever she needed--birds, animals, flowers, angels, even dragons--as she or I required them. Lovely roving decorations or patterns came out of her fingers as easily and naturally as the design for a web by a spider. I went on two afternoons a week for several years."
I love EJH's style of writing, even her memoir reads like an entertaining novel--completely absorbing and always interesting. I can't decide whether to just race to the end or to keep pace with The Light Years. In any case there are four Cazalet novels, and I'm sure it won't take me that long to read her memoir. I really need to read more of these--if only they were all as good and insightful.