I've written about Elizabeth Jane Howard's Slipstream multiple times, so I imagine you already know how much I enjoyed reading her memoir. She writes with such brutal honesty that it was almost painful going at times, though she also tells her story in an easygoing and chatty manner that I found completely absorbing as well. Since this is a memoir and not a biography, she talks more about her life experiences, particularly her relationships, which were many and varied, than about her writing, though she does touch on her books in a general sort of way.
It's hard to sum up a life as full as Elizabeth Jane Howard's. I'm not sure I even want to try as she tells her own story so much better than I ever could here in this little space. I will mention a few interesting things about her, however. Throughout the book EJH is extremely self-deprecating, and she talks often of her low self-esteem. As she was taught at home she felt uneducated or at least undereducated. She grew up in a household where boys were prized over girls, and it wasn't nice or proper to draw attention to oneself. For a long time she didn't believe she was attractive and in any case felt it was wrong to accept compliments. All this, of course, set her up for a lifetime of difficulties, which only much later were worked out with the aid of psychotherapy. I think what she wanted most was to find true love and happiness, which proved to be elusive.
She spent the war years trying her hand at acting in the theater and modelling with marginal success. Her life seemed very bohemian as she moved from place to place living at times hand to mouth. She was to marry three times. Her first marriage at the age of only nineteen to Peter Scott (the son of the Arctic Explorer) produced one daughter but ended in divorce. Peter Scott was much older and Jane (as she was called) was extremely immature and naive. She went through a series of unsatisfying relationships (men seemed to fall at her feet) before a disastrous second marriage, which didn't last long (and EJH doesn't waste many pages on). It was her marriage to author Kingsley Amis that was so notable and tempestuous. She fell in love with him when both she and Amis were married to other people. The feelings were deep and mutual and the marriage lasted eighteen years, though the relationship increasingly became filled with animosity towards the end. I've never read anything by Kingsley Amis, but he sounds like he was not only surly but selfish and self-absorbed. And mean! It's no wonder that the marriage ended in divorce, too.
No worries, I've not told you anything more than you would read on the jacket description or discover from looking at the photo inserts. I think EJH has lived an amazing life, despite the rough times she went through. Although every aspect of this memoir was to me fascinating, I especially loved the references to literary life in the second half of the 20th century. She knew and interacted with so many famous authors--this book is a who's who of the literary world during that period. She worked for several publishers, wrote for magazines, organized literary events, did radio and TV. She also wrote book reviews and I do want to share one quote as I agree with what she has to say:
"I reviewed books for Queen in tandem with finishing my novel. I was working under Francis Wyndham who was the literary editor. He was a very easy boss and gave me complete freedom to choose what I reviewed. It was overwhelming. The limited space I had meant that I couldn't review more than three or four books per issue, yet I was supposed to cover everything readers might want to read. I'd go to the office every week or so to look through and choose books to take home. I read far more than I reviewed, but it was impossible to keep up with the steady stream of new publications. I never reviewed a book without having read all of it. I worked on the principle that there was little point in writing about a book I thought bad--it would be like telling people how not to get to the post office. Reviewing is not literary criticism: a reviewer is there to tell people what they might like to read and why."
Perhaps her novel writing has been the one area in her life that she has approached with unerring determination that has brought her success. Love All is her most recently published work, which was released just last year. I've been rereading her Cazalet Chronicles and have just started Marking Time, which is the second of four books. Elizabeth Jane Howard is a really remarkable woman, and I can't recommend her memoir (and her novels!) highly enough.
In case you're curious, I also wrote about Slipstream here, here, here and here (I told you I liked it).