A wise and beautiful book about what it feels like to be alive--I really
loved it.--Zadie Smith
Maggie Gee's account of her life as a writer cuts to the bone as she
relives triumphs, rejections, despair and renewal. It's a wonderful
book, for its boldness and vigour, and for its piercing honesty.--Claire
Tomalin
How do you become a writer, and why?
Maggie Gee's journey starts in a small family in post-war Britain, a
long way from the literary world. At seventeen, Maggie goes, a lamb to
the slaughter, to university. From the 1960s onwards she lives the
defining events of her generation: the coming of the Pill and sexual
freedom, tremors in the British layer-cake of class and race. In the
1980s, Maggie finally gets published, falls in love, marries, and has a
daughter--but for the next three decades and beyond, she survives, and
sometimes thrives, by writing. This frank, bold memoir dares to explore
the big questions: success and failure, sex, death, and parenthood--our
animal life.
Maggie Gee was chosen as one of Granta's original Best Young British
Novelists. She has published many novels to great acclaim, including
The White Family, shortlisted for the Orange and IMPAC prizes; My
Cleaner; The Flood, longlisted for the Orange Prize; and The Ice
People. She was the first female chair of the Royal Society of
Literature from 2004-2008 and is now one of its vice presidents.
