In Gratitude
By Jenny Diski
3.5/5
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About this ebook
'One of the most inventive, original and disturbing writers of her generation' - Daily Telegraph
'Diski does not do linear, or normal, or boring … In Gratitude amounts to the inner monologue of a highly intelligent, furiously funny, traumatised woman' - Helen Davies, Sunday Times
'She deserves our unfeigned admiration, not for her bravery or her struggle, or any irrelevant tosh like that, but for writing so well' - Guardian
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In August 2014, Jenny Diski was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and given 'two or three years' to live. Being a writer, she decided to write about her experience – and to tell a story she had not yet told: that of being taken in, aged fifteen, by the author Doris Lessing, and the subsequent fifty years of their complex relationship. Splicing childhood memories with present-day realities, Diski paints an unflinching portrait of two extraordinary writers – Lessing and herself.
Jenny Diski died a week after the publication of In Gratitude. A cerebral, witty, dazzlingly candid memoir, it is her final masterpiece.
Jenny Diski
Jenny Diski was born in 1947 in London, where she lived most of her life. She was the author of ten novels, four books of travel and memoir, including Stranger on a Train and Skating to Antarctica, two volumes of essays and a collection of short stories. Her journalism appeared in publications including the Mail on Sunday, the Observer and the London Review of Books, to which she contributed more than two hundred articles over twenty-five years. jennydiski.co.uk @diski
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Reviews for In Gratitude
37 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Well, I love memoirs and diaries and medical writing and reading about other people's cancer and (most of) Doris Lessing's books, but I had a hard time with this. I understand that with an incurable cancer diagnosis, arduous debilitating treatment, and an early life living with a very difficult famous writer, some bitterness is to be expected, but the title belies all of this. She's angry and belligerent but seems oddly unaware of this.I suppose I should read some of her other books to understand her better.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sadly, her last book. Happily, this is Jenny Diski all the way, wry, frank, unapologetic and intelligent. Once she receives a terminal diagnosis (two, actually), Diski wrote a kind of life-review-cum-journal-of-her-last-months. I am sorry we will not be reading any new books from her, but I am thankful for this one and all the others she wrote over her life.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An irascible, intelligent, honest, and often humorous memoir written by the author upon learning she had inoperable cancer. The book deals with her coping with her treatment and looming death about a third of the time. The rest in reminiscence over her life, particularly the first twenty years.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Interesting story of life with Doris Lessing in the mid to late 20th century, and thought provoking writing about dying with lung cancer.