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Alive, Alive Oh!

And Other Things that Matter
3.83 goodreads logo

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( 1,050 ratings, 216 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Alive, Alive Oh! by Diana Athill is a reflective memoir capturing the wisdom and experiences of a woman approaching the end of her life. The author shares vivid memories and insights from her long, adventurous life, encompassing success, love, loss, and joy. This book offers a touching exploration of what it means to live a life fully and richly, revealing lessons learned and cherished moments during her 98 years.
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This book may appeal to you if you enjoy insightful and candid reflections on life, love, and ageing. Diana Athill shares her wisdom and personal stories with warmth and honesty, offering a compelling look into the joys and challenges of living well into one's nineties. If you appreciate memoirs filled with humour, grace, and real-life lessons, you'll likely find this an engaging read.

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A sequel to the Costa Award-winning Somewhere Towards the End: a rich, humorous and intelligent consideration of growing old and what really matters in the end.

A sequel to the Costa Award-winning Somewhere Towards the End: a rich, humorous and intelligent consideration of growing old and what really matters in the end.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

What matters in the end? In the final years of life, which memories stand out? Writing from her retirement home in Highgate, London, as she approaches her 100th year, Diana Athill recalls in sparkling detail the moments in her life which sustain her.

With vivid memories of the past mingled with candid, wise and often very funny reflections on the experience of being very old, Alive, Alive Oh! reminds us of the joy and richness to be found at every stage of life.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Diana Athill's Alive, Alive Oh! is acclaimed for its crisp, precise language that captivates readers with its underlined-worthy phrases. Caroline Criado-Perez from the Observer highlights its vitality even in the face of death, while the Independent on Sunday praises the memoir for its clarity, frankness, and unsentimental reflection on memories.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781783787418

Publisher: Granta Books

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 02 June 2022

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Granta Books

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 10.0mm

Width: 129.0mm

Height: 198.0mm

Weight: 130g

Pages: 176

About the Author

DIANA ATHILL was born in 1917. She helped Andre Deutsch establish the publishing company that bore his name and worked as an editor for Deutsch for four decades. She is the author of eight volumes of memoirs - Stet, Instead of a Letter, After a Funeral, Yesterday Morning, Make Believe, Somewhere Towards the End, Alive, Alive Oh!, A Florence Diary - a collection of letters, Instead of a Book, and a novel, Don't Look At Me Like That, all published by Granta, as well as a collection of short stories, Midsummer Night in the Workhouse (Persephone Books). In January 2009, she won the Costa Biography Award for Somewhere Towards the End, and was presented with an OBE. She died in January 2019.

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  • Don't Look At Me Like That
    England, in the mid-fifties. Meg Bailey has always aspired to live a respectable life. With her best friend, Roxane, she moves from secondary school to an un-Bohemian art college in Oxford. Under the watchful eye of Roxanne's mother, Mrs Wheeler, the two girls flourish in Oxfordian society. But Meg constantly longs for more. Not content to stay in Oxford, she...
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  • Stet
    Diana Athill helped shape some of the most celebrated books in modern literature. For nearly five decades, she edited (and nursed and coerced and coaxed) writers including Jean Rhys, V. S. Naipaul, and Philip Roth. From the pleasures, intrigues, and complexities of a life spent among authors and manuscripts to an account of Diana's own turn to writing, this is...
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  • Somewhere Towards The End
    There is a sense throughout Athill's work that you are making a new friend as much as reading a new story... a delight to read. Observer WINNER OF THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY PRIZE, the moving and witty memoir on what it means to grow old. Written in her nineties, when she was free from any inhibitions she may have once had,...
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  • After A Funeral
    This is the story of how and why a talented writer came to take his own life. When Diana Athill met the man she calls Didi, an Egyptian in exile, she fell in love instantly and out of love just as fast. Didi moved into her flat, they shared housework and holidays, and a life of easy intimacy seemed to...
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  • A Florence Diary
    In August 1947, Diana Athill travelled to Florence by the Golden Arrow train for a two-week holiday with her good friend Pen. In this playful diary of that trip, Athill recorded her observations and adventures β€” eating with (and paid for by) the hopeful men they meet on their travels, admiring architectural sights, sampling delicious pastries, eking out their budget...
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  • Instead of a Letter
    Diana Athill's childhood was idyllic, brought up in the Norfolk countryside. Aged only fifteen, she fell in love with a young undergraduate. They travelled to Oxford, engaged to be married. Then everything fell apart in the cruellest possible way. In this classic modern memoir, Diana Athill dissects the terrible consequences of loss and her struggle to rebuild a personality destroyed...
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  • Somewhere Towards The End
    What is it like to be old? Diana Athill made her reputation as a writer with the candour of her memoirsβ€”her commitment, in her words, 'to understand, to be aware, to touch the truth'. Written in her nineties, when she was free from any inhibitions she may have once had, she reflects frankly on the losses and occasionally the gains...
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