A Radical Romance
A Memoir of Love, Grief and Consolation
Published on 31. October 2019
Book
Hardback
256 pages
978-0-241-24450-0 (ISBN)
Description
WINNER OF THE PEN ACKERLEY PRIZE
'Remarkable, moving, illuminating. A memoir of cauterising honesty. This is a book that deserves to be widely read' Spectator
Alison Light met the radical social historian, Raphael Samuel, in London in 1986. Twenty years her senior, Raphael was a charismatic figure on the British Left, utterly driven by his work and by a commitment to collective politics. Within a year they were married. Within ten, Raphael would be dead.
Theirs was an attraction of opposites - he from a Jewish Communist family with its roots in Russia and Eastern Europe, she from the English working class. In this chronicle of a passionate marriage, Alison Light peels back the layers of their time together, its intimacies and its estrangements.
She tells of moving into Raphael's cluttered 18th-century house in Spitalfields and into his equally full, unconventional life; of the whirlwind of change outside their door which brutally transformed London's old East End districts; of being widowed at 41, and finding inspiration in her friendship with Raphael's mother. Finally she reflects on the power of mourning and how it shapes a life. Through its frank and touching account of a marriage between two very different people, it celebrates the capacity we all have to share our lives and to change our selves.
'The greatest memoirs give us something more than scenes from a life - they offer all the complex shades and colours that we expect in fiction. A Radical Romance is more than just some summing-up: it is a work of art' Guardian
'Beautifully crafted...It casts a light on the lightness of love and the profound depression of loss. A truly gifted writer' The Herald
'Remarkable, moving, illuminating. A memoir of cauterising honesty. This is a book that deserves to be widely read' Spectator
Alison Light met the radical social historian, Raphael Samuel, in London in 1986. Twenty years her senior, Raphael was a charismatic figure on the British Left, utterly driven by his work and by a commitment to collective politics. Within a year they were married. Within ten, Raphael would be dead.
Theirs was an attraction of opposites - he from a Jewish Communist family with its roots in Russia and Eastern Europe, she from the English working class. In this chronicle of a passionate marriage, Alison Light peels back the layers of their time together, its intimacies and its estrangements.
She tells of moving into Raphael's cluttered 18th-century house in Spitalfields and into his equally full, unconventional life; of the whirlwind of change outside their door which brutally transformed London's old East End districts; of being widowed at 41, and finding inspiration in her friendship with Raphael's mother. Finally she reflects on the power of mourning and how it shapes a life. Through its frank and touching account of a marriage between two very different people, it celebrates the capacity we all have to share our lives and to change our selves.
'The greatest memoirs give us something more than scenes from a life - they offer all the complex shades and colours that we expect in fiction. A Radical Romance is more than just some summing-up: it is a work of art' Guardian
'Beautifully crafted...It casts a light on the lightness of love and the profound depression of loss. A truly gifted writer' The Herald
Reviews / Votes
There are of course memoirs that do astonish and exceed our expectations of mere self-accounting: in recent years, Helen Macdonald's H Is for Hawk; Patti Smith's various autobiographical writings; Lorna Sage's Bad Blood; and Gillian Rose's Love's Work. Alison Light's A Radical Romance now joins this select bunch of books about the self that are not simply self-regarding but truly self-exploratory * Guardian * Extremely interesting, moving, brilliantly written, as one would expect from Alison Light * Claire Tomalin * A memoir of cauterising honesty. This is a book that deserves to be widely read * Spectator * An inspiring account of the deep love between Alison Light and her late husband Raphael Samuel * TLS * Beautifully crafted...It casts a light on the lightness of love and the profound depression of loss. A truly gifted writer * Hugh MacDonald, The Herald * She writes with precision and tenderness about loss. A Radical Romance is an admirable tribute to a man, a period of rapid change in London, and an unusual marriage * Guardian * Compulsively readable. Light is a shrewd narrator . . . she reflects with careful psychological and philosophical insight on the reality of loneliness and profound loss following ten years of marriage. Light is also a poet and it shows in certain suppositions or propositions, those observations she posits in high-wire mental leaps. * RTE * Part detective story, part Dickensian saga, part labour history. A thrilling and unnerving read * Observer, on Common People * Mesmeric and deeply moving * Daily Telegraph, on Common People * Remarkable, haunting, full of wisdom * The Times, on Common People * The most powerful family history I have ever read * Penelope Lively, New York Times, on Common People *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Penguin Books Ltd
Dimensions
Height: 222 mm
Width: 144 mm
Thickness: 26 mm
Weight
377 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-241-24450-0 (9780241244500)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
10/2019
1st Edition
Penguin Books Ltd
€12.99
Available for download
Person
Alison Light is a writer and critic. She is an honorary professor in the Department of English at University College, London, Honorary Professorial Fellow at Edinburgh University and a Senior Research Fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford. A regular contributor to the London Review of Books, she is the author of the much-acclaimed Mrs Woolf and the Servants and Common People, which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. She lives in Oxford.