On the Wing

Frances Kiernan

If Sayre's eye is sharp, it is also forgiving. She brings to every encounter a curious mind and a wise heart.

Louis Begley

A very good book. I read it with great pleasure: in fact, it was difficult to put down. Nora Sayre shows once again her exceptional talent for narrative and cultural criticism.

Publishers Weekly

With elegance and panache, Sayre (Previous Convictions) tells of her years in London during the second half of the 1950s, when she was 22 and looking for experience to use in a writing career. The daughter of parents who had been part of the New York literary scene in the 1920s and '30s, Sayre was soon taken under the wings of such figures among London's intelligentsia as Hungarian-born Arthur Koestler (Darkness at Noon), the New Yorker reporter A.J. Liebling, British literary critic John Davenport, British editor and critic Cyril Connolly and the leftists, dissidents and blacklisted Americans who gathered around screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart and journalist Ella Winter at their house in Hampstead. She also became friends with the actress Mai Zetterling and her lover, actor Tyrone Power. All these people became her extended family, and, she claims, gave her guidance, although often unintended. She paints colorful personal portraits for example, Davenport fussing about what his young prot g should read, write and eat; the portly Liebling waddling down the street on his way to his next gourmet meal. But where she excels is in finding the connections, both then and now, between "the tidal waves of the 20th century and how they affected private life." As a child in America, she was largely unconscious of WWII, but in England, it was impossible to ignore its Cold War legacy. As she gains insight to the private Koestler, for example, she more keenly appreciates the relationship between his post-Communist indictments of Stalin's regime and his misogyny. But this is not a dark book; in fact, Sayre dislikes the tendency among memoirists to be "wretched," spewing "buckets of boohoo." Instead, she presents an entertaining and fluent coming-of-age story that will delight literary enthusiasts both young and old. (June) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Sayre's Previous Convictions: A Journey Through the 1950s (1995) recounted her childhood in New York and Hollywood during that repressed and blacklisted era. This current volume by the former New York Times film critic is very much a continuation, beginning with her college graduation (Radcliffe, 1954) and continuing through her days as a penniless writer in London until her return to the United States in the Sixties. The chronological arrangement, with chapters based on important figures in her life (Arthur Koestler, A.J. Liebling, Mai Zetterling, Tyrone Power, and Donald Ogden Stewart), allows her to comment on literature, politics, and London society. Sayre's combination of personal and cultural history moves between revealing anecdotes to vague pronouncements based mostly on the perceptions of the young woman she was. More material and better editing might have made this a more fulfilling read. For general collections. Shelley Cox, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Film critic and memoirist Sayre (Previous Convictions, 1995) recalls her astonishing circle of acquaintances in mid-1950s London. "Like millions of young Americans with knapsacks and bicycles," she writes, Sayre headed to England at 22 to find what London might hold. There her resemblance to any typical American youth ends. The daughter of a New Yorker writer, she was soon taken up by her parents' London friends (a cross-section of the period's intelligentsia that few 22-year-olds could ever dream of meeting) and enjoyed a five-year stay in the company of history makers. Her first apartment came courtesy of Arthur Koestler, Tyrone Guthrie hired her to research scripts for his theater company, critic John Davenport helped her navigate the London literary scene, and A.J. Liebling became her dinner companion. In the wrong hands, such a tale could be insufferably smug; happily, Sayre is a charming raconteur with a light comic touch that comes into play when she recalls such incidents as Graham Greene, outraged by a savage review from Liebling, running in circles around her and a companion who had been seen with Liebling earlier in the evening. Interleaved with tales of stars—Katherine Hepburn grousing about a friend's rusty garden tools, Ingrid Bergman's musings on Casablanca's two final scenes—is fine political history. An extended chapter on the blacklisted Hollywood community gives vivid insight to the motivations of the exiles and provides an excellent précis of what was happening in the artistic community back home, long before most Americans had a comprehensive view of the anticommunist battle. "All this history was new to me. . . . About twenty years passed before itwas publicly discussed in my own country." Sayre is not above the tasty details, however; she lards her entire narrative with descriptions of who wore what and how their houses were decorated. Brisk, sharp, and elegant.