Book description
Real life and fiction meet as Angelica Garnett vividly evokes what it
is to grow up in the shadow of artists. Her family appear in different
guises in the stories, but at the centre of each one is Garnett
herself. She is naïve and foolish as Bettina, desperately seeking
acceptance into the grown-ups circle ('When All the Leaves Were Green,
My Love'); shy and cautious, but finally disloyal, as Agnes
('Aurore'); a hesitant, uncomfortable Emily ('The Birthday Party');
and a contemplative, even witty older woman, full of appetite and
guilt, as Helen ('Friendship'). Spanning an entire life, each story
reveals a figure trying to understand her place not only within the
polished circle of her family, but in an ever-changing world.
Sharply observing a colourful social milieu and the vibrant
characters that populate it, these are stories about family and
friendships, yet also curdled relationships and small betrayals. A
fictional counterpoint to her acclaimed memoir, Deceived with
Kindness, here is a portrait of a woman seeking an understanding
and acceptance of her past.
Angelica Garnett may truly be called a child of Bloomsbury. Her aunt
was Virginia Woolf, her mother Vanessa Bell, and her father Duncan
Grant, though for many years Angelica believed herself the daughter of
Vanessa's husband Clive. Her childhood homes, Charleston in Sussex and
Gordon Square in London, were both centres of Bloomsbury activity, and
she grew up surrounded by the most talked-about writers and artists of
the day - the Woolfs, Roger Fry, the Stracheys, Maynard Keynes and many
others. In 1942 she married David Garnett by whom she had four
daughters; they later separated and in 1983 she moved to France and
spent the latter part of her life painting. In 1984 she published
Deceived with Kindness
, an extraordinarily frank memoir about her childhood, which won the J.
R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography. Angelica Garnett died in 2012, aged
93.
