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Overview
Living Backwards: A Transatlantic Memoir incorporates November 1948 into a longer work that takes the ten-year-old author from a small gray Yorkshire village to the bright postwar boom of Los Angeles and back again at fourteen to the sober mill region of his ancestors.
Through it all Living Backwards captures in moving detail a schoolboy's feeling of being neither of one place nor the other. As his father loses his battle with Alzheimer's disease, the middle-aged narrator becomes his father's memory, recalling for him his Yorkshire past, tying together the book's themes of memory and loss, identity and place.
Editorials
Booknews
The first part of this work was published in 1990 as November 1948. It's been incorporated into this longer memoir, which takes the author (English, U. of Delaware) from being 10 years old in a Yorkshire village to the postwar boom of Los Angeles and back at age 14, without his family, to the sober mill region of his ancestors. A year later he returns to the shiny California of the '50s, feeling that he belongs to neither one place nor the other. Ultimately, as his father suffers from Alzheimer's disease, the middle-aged narrator recalls for his father his Yorkshire past, tying together the themes of memory and loss, identity and place. No index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Book Details
Published
June 17, 1995
Publisher
University of Virginia Press
Pages
220
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780813916330