In Gratitude

Reviews / Votes

My favourite reading this year -- Blake Morrison She deserves our unfeigned admiration, not for her bravery or her struggle, or any irrelevant tosh like that, but for writing so well * Guardian * A marvel of steady and dispassionate self-revelation ... Bracingly devoid of sententiousness, sentimentality or any kind of spiritual urge or twitch * New York Times * Intelligent, funny and challenging * Independent * Involving, buoyant and, though-provoking * Observer * Warm, witty, wryly provocative * The Times * Superb, original and unsentimental writer * Guardian * Few authors were better at combining the personal and political (or Twitter) than Jenny Diski. She is sorely missed, but at least she finished In Gratitude, her memoir about her time with Doris Lessing -- Juliet Jacques * Guardian * The record Diski makes of her cancer and the proliferating side effects of her treatment is vivid, clear-eyed and sometimes funny ... What gives In Gratitude its power and brilliance are the dramas of her childhood, her teenage years with Doris Lessing, and the high-octane rage that leaves her with a fiercely introverted spirit ... She presents one of the clearest descriptions of a chaotic family I have ever read ... Original, sharp -- Terri Apter * Times Literary Supplement * She is savagely good company * Daily Telegraph Summer Reads * The late Jenny Diski's In Gratitude seemed to me an exertion of self-knowledge as taxing, precise and memorable as "Such, Such Were the Joys." The author is grateful and unforgiving (in hard-to-measure proportions) to the grown-ups who misshaped her early years. She remembers her adolescence with a miraculous fidelity of present to past feeling, but the view is from the outside too: she was a tough customer, a precocious pest, and lucky to get out alive. Accurate memory here resists every temptation of pride; and because she has no interest in charming the reader, Diski is equal to her great subject. Gratitude merely for services rendered can seem at best a servile virtue, yet ingratitude is the most unpardonable of vices. How to stay clear of both? These extraordinary fragments of autobiography tell us that the struggle never stops -- David Bromwich * Times Literary Supplement, 'Book of the Year' * Diski was a spare, beautiful, economical writer ... It is the book of a born fighter that will last far beyond 2016' -- Ruth Scurr * Wall Street Journal Books of the Year * In Gratitude works on many levels ... At its heart, though, is the story of a difficult relationship between women, both, as it happens, outstanding writers ... It's the story Diski most needed to tell * Guardian * Fiercely elegant -- Jane Shilling * Daily Mail * Devastating ... With her blunt honesty and ineradicable prickliness, she was, right up to the end, defiantly individual * Sunday Herald *