An Evocative Biographical Account Of Lost London
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I had expected more of a straight autobiography of Tim Lott rather than this account of how he came to deal with his own issues in life by looking at the lives of his parents. Yet this examination has, perhaps unintentionally, given us a richly detailed and often amusing look at the changing condition of the post-war working class in West London. By telling us the story of his parent's own childhoods, lives, meeting and marriage, Lott has allowed a glimpse in to the collected experience that formed his own childhood and young adulthood within a cultural framework that has now vanished from the English social landscape. I enjoyed this book thoroughly. Lott has written in arrestingly descriptive style that maintains a good pace and holds the reader. Although I concluded that his life has not exactly been one of ease, it does appear that some of his 'problems' have been of his own making. Nevertheless, it did not diminish my sympathy for him or those in his life.
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An evocative walk around West London
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The book is fantastic. Granted, Tim Lott's life has thrown up a fair amount of material for such a book, but this surpasses itself with the sheer amount of evocative storytelling. I find memoirs can be a bit too much sometimes. Sometimes I don't feel as though I really care enough to be truly interested. But from the very beginning, Lott draws you in. It's true that you would have to be very hard hearted not be moved by his mother's suicide note, but the background Lott builds around his family is wonderful. I would say I'm slightly biased in that I live in the West London area, and know many of the places Lott talks about, but this is also a true London book. I loved the sections covering life as it was for the Lott family earlier in the century, and it's testament to Lott's writing that I even began to care about this distant relatives. I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone.
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Beautifully written, moving book.
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I loved this book. Tim Lott has written an overwhelmingly honest and moving book. As a mental health professional, I feel he deserves a lot of credit for this story of himself and those he comes from. I felt as though I knew them all.
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Well written but ultimately disappointing
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This is an interesting and well written book by a clever writer. There are not, after all, many autobiographies of people who grew up in Southall.Lott clearly has an eye for detail and his description of growing up in the fifties and sixties was accurate (I also went to Chiswick Lido as a child and found his description eerily accurate). Why did I did then feel disappointed by the end of the book? It was partly because the explanations for his mother's suicide and his own depression were so unsatisfactory, but mainly because I lost sympathy with Lott himself. Despite calling himself a socialist, he was, by his own admission, 'on the make' in the eighties, a wide boy, never seemingly bothered to help the class he comes from and is so aware of. OK ,so what?. He then finds that 'money can't buy you happiness'and so, as he says, becomes 'a poor little rich boy'.He takes a degree and , despite his depression, does very well. Does this please him? Of course not. He manages to land a great job against 'thousands' of others but still wallows in self pity. That is till he pops a pill and everything is alright again. Something here simply does not add up. Compared to, for example, Linda Grant's 'Tell Me who I am Again', this book crucially lacks warmth, humour and intergrity. I was not taken in.
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clarity brought about through connection
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Tim Lott's acount of surviving the end of a love affair via obsession, disconnection and finally clarity of thought is searing and complete. It is only through the experience of loss of his lover, himself and finally of his mother, that Lott gains sufficient insight to connect up the various lines of his life experience and that of his mother. This book is as much a sociological account of how the changes in Britain affected those who upheld Britain's class system, as an anthropological account of how a class reified society delivers its stratas and makes them and breaks them. The honesty of his language owes as much to his obvious mental well-being as it does to Lott's obvious training as a writer. This is a book which should be read by all serious writers as a way through the dilemma of dealing with memory damage and emotion intelligently and without judgemental delusion. I read it after his article about obsessive relationships appeared in the Australian papers. His next book White City Blue is an equally searing account of how life catches, envelops, underpins and develops us as full human beings - brilliant, more please and any essays?
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