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Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Sybille Bedford's latest novel walks the borderline between autobiography and fiction. It picks up where A Legacy leaves off, leading us from the Kaiser's Germany into the wider Europe of the 1920s and the limbo between world wars. The narrator, Billi, tells the story of her apprenticeship to life, and of her many teachers: her father, a pleasure-loving German baron; her brilliant, beautiful, erratic English mother; and later, on the Mediterranean coast of France, the Huxleys, Aldous and Maria.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
About the author
Sybille Bedford
38 books77 followersSybille Bedford, OBE (16 March 1911 – 17 February 2006) was a German-born English writer. Many of her works are partly autobiographical. Julia Neuberger proclaimed her "the finest woman writer of the 20th century" while Bruce Chatwin saw her as "one of the most dazzling practitioners of modern English prose.
Works
The Sudden View: a Mexican Journey - 1953 - (republished as A Visit to Don Otavio: a Traveller's Tale from Mexico, a travelogue)
A Legacy: A Novel - 1956 - her first novel, a work inspired by the early life of the author's father, which focuses on the brutality and anti-Semitism in the cadet schools of the German officer class.
The Best We Can Do: (The Trial of Dr Adams) - 1958 - an account of the murder trial of suspected serial killer John Bodkin Adams
The Faces of Justice: A Traveller's report - 1961 - a description of the legal systems of England, Germany, Switzerland, and France.
A Favourite of the Gods - 1963 - a novel about an American heiress who marries a Roman Prince
A Compass Error - 1968 - a sequel to the above, describing the love affairs of the granddaughter of that work's protagonist
Aldous Huxley: A biography - 1973 - the standard, authorized biography of Huxley
Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education - 1989 - a sort of followup to A Legacy, this novel was inspired by the author's experiences living in Italy and France with her mother
As It Was: Pleasures, Landscapes and Justice - 1990 - a collection of magazine pieces on various trials, including the censorship of Lady Chatterley's Lover, the trial of Jack Ruby, and the Auschwitz trial, as well as pieces on food and travel.
Pleasures and Landscapes: A Traveller's Tales from Europe - a reissue of the above, removing the legal writings, and including two additional travel essays.
Quicksands: A Memoir - 2005 - A memoir of the author's life, from her childhood in Berlin to her experiences in postwar Europe.
Works
The Sudden View: a Mexican Journey - 1953 - (republished as A Visit to Don Otavio: a Traveller's Tale from Mexico, a travelogue)
A Legacy: A Novel - 1956 - her first novel, a work inspired by the early life of the author's father, which focuses on the brutality and anti-Semitism in the cadet schools of the German officer class.
The Best We Can Do: (The Trial of Dr Adams) - 1958 - an account of the murder trial of suspected serial killer John Bodkin Adams
The Faces of Justice: A Traveller's report - 1961 - a description of the legal systems of England, Germany, Switzerland, and France.
A Favourite of the Gods - 1963 - a novel about an American heiress who marries a Roman Prince
A Compass Error - 1968 - a sequel to the above, describing the love affairs of the granddaughter of that work's protagonist
Aldous Huxley: A biography - 1973 - the standard, authorized biography of Huxley
Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education - 1989 - a sort of followup to A Legacy, this novel was inspired by the author's experiences living in Italy and France with her mother
As It Was: Pleasures, Landscapes and Justice - 1990 - a collection of magazine pieces on various trials, including the censorship of Lady Chatterley's Lover, the trial of Jack Ruby, and the Auschwitz trial, as well as pieces on food and travel.
Pleasures and Landscapes: A Traveller's Tales from Europe - a reissue of the above, removing the legal writings, and including two additional travel essays.
Quicksands: A Memoir - 2005 - A memoir of the author's life, from her childhood in Berlin to her experiences in postwar Europe.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
September 29, 2023
This is a great book and I’m adding it to my favorites. It’s an autobiographical novel of the youth of the British writer Sybille Bedford (1911-2006). By “autobiographical novel” I mean most of the events, people and places are true but it is fictionalized. There really isn’t a plot other than the sequence of events in her life. It’s fundamentally a story of the relationship between this young woman and her mother. As we learn in the book, while at times her mother could be loving and caring, much of the time she was simply 'nucking futs.'
As I summarize her early life in the review below, I am also giving away the 'plot,' so I should write:
SPOILERS FOLLOW
Sybille had one of the most international upbringings you can imagine. She was born in Germany near the French and Swiss borders and lived her formative years at various times in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France and the UK.
Her father was much older than her mother. He was loving but distant. He collected art and turned their house into a Renaissance museum. But let’s get to her mother: if Sybille grew up today, social service agencies would have a thick file on her. Her mother was never quite sure what she was supposed to do with a child. (I’m reminded of Stoner’s wife in John William’s novel of that name.) She would visit a bachelor’s apartment and leave Sybille in her baby carriage in the hallway. She would simply take off to visit and travel for weeks, leaving Sybille with strangers she met on the beach or with hotel maids.
At a very young age Sybille ran away from home (by train) to live with her half-sister and her husband. After a desperate search involving police, her parents said – 'ok you can stay there.' Her schooling and sometimes private tutoring were sporadic - often nobody bothered to enroll her in school. After her German father died, and because her mother was not a German citizen, Sybille was at times a ward of the German state and her mother, then living in Italy or France, tended to ignore the thick legal packages that arrived by mail.
After her father died, Sybille’s mother was almost engaged to two men at once. She finally chose an architect/designer 15 years her junior. As Sybille got older it seems like her mother remembered once in a while that she had a child. A letter would arrive commanding Sybille to pack up, travel by train and come to live with her mother. Once the only way Sybille knew where she was going was by the postmark on the envelope (France).
Most of the story takes place in Sanary-sur-Mer, where she ended up living on-and-off for 14 years. That small town in France was chosen because her mother and her new husband were headed for Spain but her mother tired of the train ride and decided 'let’s stay here.' This was not considered part of the French Rivera in those days but it attracted artists and offbeat folks including the Aldous Huxleys, Colette, Thomas Mann, and the artist Moise Kisling and his wife Renee. Man Ray took photos of her mother.
These were the people Sybille grew up with. Many of these artistic folks were avant-garde in their lifestyles. The Kislings, for example, had a ménage-a-trois going, one woman; two men. From a very early age Sybille was exposed to a world of unstable adult relationships. She writes of this instability “Was it never possible for everybody to be happy? Did anything good have to be at someone else’s expense?”
Hints of Sybille’s sexual orientation began at an early age. As a young girl in Germany she received permission to invite her three best friends over for lunch 'at the museum.' The cook and the maid were shocked (but not her parents) to see that all her friends were boys! She asked permission from her local priest to act as an altar boy at her local parish and did so until the bishop put a stop to it. Although some who have written about her say she was bisexual (and she did have experiences with men at an early age) in a very late-in-life interview, when asked about significant others, she only mentioned three long-term partners, all women.
In the book she writes that her favorite quote is one that she memorized at a very young age: “Si on est amis, il n’y a acune difference si on fait l’amour avec.” Which she interpreted in a non-literal translation as “If it’s a friend, it’ll be all right to make love together.”
In the 1930s, when anti-Semitism started rearing its ugly head in German and Italy, her inheritance was frozen in Germany. This was because Sybille was still a German citizen her mother had Jewish ancestry. Friends of the family arranged a marriage of convenience for her with a British man to obtain British citizenship. The only result was that she dropped her German name (von Schoenebeck) and kept his name, Bedford.
As an older teenager, in today’s lingo, we would say Sybille 'went clubbing' nightly, having experiences probably with both men and women. She would come home at dawn to her morphine-addicted mother, who was in despair over an affair her husband had (the husband 15 years younger than her). For years Sybille was caught in a terrible position, torn between giving her mother ‘tough love’ and fighting with her to get her into rehab, paid for by their wealthy neighbors. Other times she gave in to her mother’s screaming and begging for drugs and became her enabler.
Sybille Bedford did not write a large number of books and the ones she did write were quite varied, so it’s hard to say what 'type' of writer she was. Most of her writing was for newspapers and magazines.
Around age 16 she spent some years living with her mother’s friends in London. She regularly attended court cases as entertainment. Undoubtedly this led to her work as a trial correspondent. She covered many high-profile cases including Jack Ruby’s trial for Life magazine. (Ruby assassinated Kennedy's assassin.) She covered the Auschwitz war crimes trials and the Lady Chatterley obscenity prosecution.
Sybille wrote a book about legal systems in various European countries, which became a textbook. She wrote a biography of her former neighbor in Sanary, Aldous Huxley. She loved food and wine and became known as a travel writer with a gastronomical flair. One of her best known works is a travel book to Mexico, A Visit to Don Octavio. In a New Yorker piece on Bedford, Joan Acocella wrote that it was the only travel book that ever made her cry and another reviewer called it 'the best best travel book of the 20th century.'
Jigsaw, written when she was was 78, was nominated for the 1989 Booker. To an extent it's a follow-up to her first novel, A Legacy, published in 1956. Both are the story of her relationship with her mother.
I wrote a long review because I found this book fascinating; both for its writing and the story.
photos top to bottom:
librarything.com
hotelroomsearch.com (Sanary-sur-Mer)
elpais.com
[Edited 9/29/23]
As I summarize her early life in the review below, I am also giving away the 'plot,' so I should write:
SPOILERS FOLLOW
Sybille had one of the most international upbringings you can imagine. She was born in Germany near the French and Swiss borders and lived her formative years at various times in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France and the UK.
Her father was much older than her mother. He was loving but distant. He collected art and turned their house into a Renaissance museum. But let’s get to her mother: if Sybille grew up today, social service agencies would have a thick file on her. Her mother was never quite sure what she was supposed to do with a child. (I’m reminded of Stoner’s wife in John William’s novel of that name.) She would visit a bachelor’s apartment and leave Sybille in her baby carriage in the hallway. She would simply take off to visit and travel for weeks, leaving Sybille with strangers she met on the beach or with hotel maids.
At a very young age Sybille ran away from home (by train) to live with her half-sister and her husband. After a desperate search involving police, her parents said – 'ok you can stay there.' Her schooling and sometimes private tutoring were sporadic - often nobody bothered to enroll her in school. After her German father died, and because her mother was not a German citizen, Sybille was at times a ward of the German state and her mother, then living in Italy or France, tended to ignore the thick legal packages that arrived by mail.
After her father died, Sybille’s mother was almost engaged to two men at once. She finally chose an architect/designer 15 years her junior. As Sybille got older it seems like her mother remembered once in a while that she had a child. A letter would arrive commanding Sybille to pack up, travel by train and come to live with her mother. Once the only way Sybille knew where she was going was by the postmark on the envelope (France).
Most of the story takes place in Sanary-sur-Mer, where she ended up living on-and-off for 14 years. That small town in France was chosen because her mother and her new husband were headed for Spain but her mother tired of the train ride and decided 'let’s stay here.' This was not considered part of the French Rivera in those days but it attracted artists and offbeat folks including the Aldous Huxleys, Colette, Thomas Mann, and the artist Moise Kisling and his wife Renee. Man Ray took photos of her mother.
These were the people Sybille grew up with. Many of these artistic folks were avant-garde in their lifestyles. The Kislings, for example, had a ménage-a-trois going, one woman; two men. From a very early age Sybille was exposed to a world of unstable adult relationships. She writes of this instability “Was it never possible for everybody to be happy? Did anything good have to be at someone else’s expense?”
Hints of Sybille’s sexual orientation began at an early age. As a young girl in Germany she received permission to invite her three best friends over for lunch 'at the museum.' The cook and the maid were shocked (but not her parents) to see that all her friends were boys! She asked permission from her local priest to act as an altar boy at her local parish and did so until the bishop put a stop to it. Although some who have written about her say she was bisexual (and she did have experiences with men at an early age) in a very late-in-life interview, when asked about significant others, she only mentioned three long-term partners, all women.
In the book she writes that her favorite quote is one that she memorized at a very young age: “Si on est amis, il n’y a acune difference si on fait l’amour avec.” Which she interpreted in a non-literal translation as “If it’s a friend, it’ll be all right to make love together.”
In the 1930s, when anti-Semitism started rearing its ugly head in German and Italy, her inheritance was frozen in Germany. This was because Sybille was still a German citizen her mother had Jewish ancestry. Friends of the family arranged a marriage of convenience for her with a British man to obtain British citizenship. The only result was that she dropped her German name (von Schoenebeck) and kept his name, Bedford.
As an older teenager, in today’s lingo, we would say Sybille 'went clubbing' nightly, having experiences probably with both men and women. She would come home at dawn to her morphine-addicted mother, who was in despair over an affair her husband had (the husband 15 years younger than her). For years Sybille was caught in a terrible position, torn between giving her mother ‘tough love’ and fighting with her to get her into rehab, paid for by their wealthy neighbors. Other times she gave in to her mother’s screaming and begging for drugs and became her enabler.
Sybille Bedford did not write a large number of books and the ones she did write were quite varied, so it’s hard to say what 'type' of writer she was. Most of her writing was for newspapers and magazines.
Around age 16 she spent some years living with her mother’s friends in London. She regularly attended court cases as entertainment. Undoubtedly this led to her work as a trial correspondent. She covered many high-profile cases including Jack Ruby’s trial for Life magazine. (Ruby assassinated Kennedy's assassin.) She covered the Auschwitz war crimes trials and the Lady Chatterley obscenity prosecution.
Sybille wrote a book about legal systems in various European countries, which became a textbook. She wrote a biography of her former neighbor in Sanary, Aldous Huxley. She loved food and wine and became known as a travel writer with a gastronomical flair. One of her best known works is a travel book to Mexico, A Visit to Don Octavio. In a New Yorker piece on Bedford, Joan Acocella wrote that it was the only travel book that ever made her cry and another reviewer called it 'the best best travel book of the 20th century.'
Jigsaw, written when she was was 78, was nominated for the 1989 Booker. To an extent it's a follow-up to her first novel, A Legacy, published in 1956. Both are the story of her relationship with her mother.
I wrote a long review because I found this book fascinating; both for its writing and the story.
photos top to bottom:
librarything.com
hotelroomsearch.com (Sanary-sur-Mer)
elpais.com
[Edited 9/29/23]
July 23, 2018
Podría decirse que esta es la continuación "espiritual" de la maravillosa novela "El legado". Aunque esta tiene más de memorias noveladas que de novela en sí... Si os gustó aquella, no os perdáis esta.
Sybille Bedford nos narra su vida desde su infancia en Alemania a principios del siglo XX hasta su juventud en la Francia de los años 30 pasando por la Italia de los primeros fascismos y el Londres más cosmopolita.
La primera parte es mi preferida (vuelve a un tema que ya trató en 'El legado'; su infancia con su padre- AL QUE ADORO) y su adolescencia Londinense, pero la mayor parte de la historia está centrada en la relación con su madre. Una relación muy difícil, dura y complicada con una madre irresponsable y cruel en ocasiones con la que resulta difícil empatizar.
Esta novela carece de la fina ironía de "El legado", me pareció mucho más triste y melancólica que aquella, también más dura, aún así no carece de cierta ligereza por cómo lo cuenta todo la autora... el libro está lleno de pequeñas anécdotas de personas que existieron (extravagantes, peculiares, irrepetibles...) y retrata maravillosamente bien esa europa eufórica de entreguerras a la que acechaba el desastre.
Sybille Bedford nos narra su vida desde su infancia en Alemania a principios del siglo XX hasta su juventud en la Francia de los años 30 pasando por la Italia de los primeros fascismos y el Londres más cosmopolita.
La primera parte es mi preferida (vuelve a un tema que ya trató en 'El legado'; su infancia con su padre- AL QUE ADORO) y su adolescencia Londinense, pero la mayor parte de la historia está centrada en la relación con su madre. Una relación muy difícil, dura y complicada con una madre irresponsable y cruel en ocasiones con la que resulta difícil empatizar.
Esta novela carece de la fina ironía de "El legado", me pareció mucho más triste y melancólica que aquella, también más dura, aún así no carece de cierta ligereza por cómo lo cuenta todo la autora... el libro está lleno de pequeñas anécdotas de personas que existieron (extravagantes, peculiares, irrepetibles...) y retrata maravillosamente bien esa europa eufórica de entreguerras a la que acechaba el desastre.
May 26, 2018
Another one from the 1989 Booker shortlist, this lightly fictionalised autobiographical novel was my first experience of reading Bedford and a very enjoyable read.
The book describes her unconventional childhood between the wars. The story starts in Germany - when her parents divorced she lived with her father in a Schloss near the French and Swiss borders - her father was a connoisseur and collector - slightly impoverished but reluctant to sell his prized possessions.
When her father died she joined her mother, initially in Italy, where she was starting a relationship with the much younger Alessandro that led to an unlikely marriage. The young Sybille was a ward of a German court and as part of an agreement with her trustees it was decided that she would be educated in England, where the friends entrusted with finding a school decided to educate her themselves.
Her mother and her young husband fled Mussolini's Italy and settled in the village of Sanary-sur-Mer on the South coast of France, and the rest of Sybille's childhood was spent alternating between Sanary and London.
The story is evocative and full of intriguing details and joie de vivre - she mixed with some interesting people including Aldous Huxley who also settled in Sanary. Others appear pseudonymously to protect their reputations. The dominant character remains her mother whose descent into drug addiction is described in the final part of the story.
The book describes her unconventional childhood between the wars. The story starts in Germany - when her parents divorced she lived with her father in a Schloss near the French and Swiss borders - her father was a connoisseur and collector - slightly impoverished but reluctant to sell his prized possessions.
When her father died she joined her mother, initially in Italy, where she was starting a relationship with the much younger Alessandro that led to an unlikely marriage. The young Sybille was a ward of a German court and as part of an agreement with her trustees it was decided that she would be educated in England, where the friends entrusted with finding a school decided to educate her themselves.
Her mother and her young husband fled Mussolini's Italy and settled in the village of Sanary-sur-Mer on the South coast of France, and the rest of Sybille's childhood was spent alternating between Sanary and London.
The story is evocative and full of intriguing details and joie de vivre - she mixed with some interesting people including Aldous Huxley who also settled in Sanary. Others appear pseudonymously to protect their reputations. The dominant character remains her mother whose descent into drug addiction is described in the final part of the story.
September 19, 2018
Jigsaw crept up on me over several weeks and didn’t reveal its true power until its last page. But I won’t call it a revelation, since to suggest that Sybille Bedford orchestrated it as such, or withheld information to that end, would cheapen it, and I don’t believe she did. So let’s just say that for 350 pages I had thought I was reading a book about its author’s relationship with her mother, until on page 351 I saw it was something more.
With this line my heart broke. I read on, in tears, through 150 plain words to the end. What had happened? How had she done it? I went back, found the tipping point: that line, the hinge on which the whole book had rested. And I realised that somehow Jigsaw had increased its claim on my heart parabolically, from early near-indifference brightened only or mostly by the bizarre nature of the events related, through slow-rising admiration for the surefooted grace with which Bedford painted her settings and characters, to flat-out awe at how she’d quietly insinuated herself and won my love. I’d say I don’t know how she did it but maybe I do. Maybe, against all odds, she was simply herself, and told her story as close to truthfully as basic decorum would allow. But as to how and why that story achieved such power, I’m in the dark.
Against the odds, then, Jigsaw is magic, it’s art, it’s a novel. And it proves that fiction is not the essential component in any of these feats; creativity is. To recreate her strange, neglected, privileged childhood (the neglect and privilege stemmed both from the same thing, her independence), that is Bedford’s humble yet grand achievement. Because after all, the things a writer experiences are not always or even generally those that are easiest to describe. Or yes, let’s say they’re easy, but ease of description does not necessarily, or even generally, produce power. It’s the act of conjuring – from nothing, from dreams, from the mind’s eye – that makes us work at describing. So, generally, I read novels for immersion, and biographies or autobiographies for information. Sybille Bedford immerses us in her subject with the skill of a novelist, and reminds us that fiction and non-fiction are not mutually exclusive but two points on a continuum; and crucially, that wherever you are on that continuum you’re still an artist, so long as you live and breathe your work, and it too lives and breathes.
I was filled by a surge of love, impersonal love, as though he and I had become a link in the chain of the brotherhood of man.
With this line my heart broke. I read on, in tears, through 150 plain words to the end. What had happened? How had she done it? I went back, found the tipping point: that line, the hinge on which the whole book had rested. And I realised that somehow Jigsaw had increased its claim on my heart parabolically, from early near-indifference brightened only or mostly by the bizarre nature of the events related, through slow-rising admiration for the surefooted grace with which Bedford painted her settings and characters, to flat-out awe at how she’d quietly insinuated herself and won my love. I’d say I don’t know how she did it but maybe I do. Maybe, against all odds, she was simply herself, and told her story as close to truthfully as basic decorum would allow. But as to how and why that story achieved such power, I’m in the dark.
Against the odds, then, Jigsaw is magic, it’s art, it’s a novel. And it proves that fiction is not the essential component in any of these feats; creativity is. To recreate her strange, neglected, privileged childhood (the neglect and privilege stemmed both from the same thing, her independence), that is Bedford’s humble yet grand achievement. Because after all, the things a writer experiences are not always or even generally those that are easiest to describe. Or yes, let’s say they’re easy, but ease of description does not necessarily, or even generally, produce power. It’s the act of conjuring – from nothing, from dreams, from the mind’s eye – that makes us work at describing. So, generally, I read novels for immersion, and biographies or autobiographies for information. Sybille Bedford immerses us in her subject with the skill of a novelist, and reminds us that fiction and non-fiction are not mutually exclusive but two points on a continuum; and crucially, that wherever you are on that continuum you’re still an artist, so long as you live and breathe your work, and it too lives and breathes.
April 1, 2015
There is so much in this wonderful memoir. Rich in settings, personal dynamics, food, wine and atmosphere. We follow Sybille (Billi) from a childhood of constant uprooting. Her early life with her eccentric, isolated father, Maximilian von Schoenebeck, in Germany to a life with her beautiful, spontaneous mother, Elisabeth Bernhardt, in Italy and France. She is sent to England for schooling and a stay with adult friends. They are cheerful, easy-going, failing artists who are good to her but not looking for foster parent roles. Her sporadic education with short-lived tutors and a life fragmented with visits to her mother and her Italian partner, Alessandro, in Italy at intervals. Then moving to a London bed-sit and struggling for money. Billi's ambition to become a writer is nurtured as she is surrounded by a social community of vibrant, stimulating artists, exiles, writers and intellectuals in the Mediterranean. She is exposed to a world of unconventional living and thought. I did find this a hard book to rate. I wavered between five and four stars. Beautiful writing which details a life which is extraordinary.
December 20, 2009
One of the great books. The memoirs of a girl of 20 or so, based frankly on Sybille's own life, who lives on a small estate in Baden, then shuttles between the south of France, London, Berlin, and various country cottages in England, all the time avoiding formal education and most of the time love, but with astonishing portraits of her father, a Frenchified German gentleman, her mother, something of a bolter - her earliest memory is of being parked in a pram while her mother has an afternoon with her lover, a Danish novelist once thought promising - and the various characters she attaches herself to. One of the greatest female (or male) bildungsromans ever written - with great stuff about food as well as love. It's also one of the only novels to treat the 1920s and early 1930s as they were and as they felt, and not as the I*R*O*N*I*C prelude to WWII, the holocaust, etc etc.
Difficult to describe its excellence - here is how she connects this book to the story of the hero/victim of The Legacy. In "real life," the Jewish-German boy who went mad because he was sent back to the sadistic military school was the narrator's uncle, who didn't go mad, but became a German cavalry officer and married. "How far was he maimed [by the school experience?:]. Too late to say. Eccentric he must have been. Animals were his interest and he had a great way with them. Wild animals. He kept wolves and used to give them jewelled collars for Xhristmas, or so my father told me without turning a hair. Sapphires (were they really?) for the wolves, NOT for the wife; my father's tone indicated that this was a mistake."
If you hear the tone of Anthony Powell in the prose, you are right - they are about the same age - but the human knowledge and involvement is so much greater with Bedford.
Difficult to describe its excellence - here is how she connects this book to the story of the hero/victim of The Legacy. In "real life," the Jewish-German boy who went mad because he was sent back to the sadistic military school was the narrator's uncle, who didn't go mad, but became a German cavalry officer and married. "How far was he maimed [by the school experience?:]. Too late to say. Eccentric he must have been. Animals were his interest and he had a great way with them. Wild animals. He kept wolves and used to give them jewelled collars for Xhristmas, or so my father told me without turning a hair. Sapphires (were they really?) for the wolves, NOT for the wife; my father's tone indicated that this was a mistake."
If you hear the tone of Anthony Powell in the prose, you are right - they are about the same age - but the human knowledge and involvement is so much greater with Bedford.
May 22, 2024
I really, REALLY liked this one. The more I think about it, the more I realize I enjoyed it.
LOTS of warnings for this one, including child abandonment, parental death, underage drinking, sex and drug addiction.
This is a fictionalized memoir/autobiographical fiction, where creative license is taken with dates, people, conversations and places, but has a strong core of truth to it.
It FEELS true. It reminded me of Requiem for a Dream, the movie with Jennifer Connelly. It starts off all happy and hopeful and ends in dashed dreams and drug dependency.
This is NOT for the faint of heart, that is to be sure. Be warned.
The narrator had a lovely voice, but she fell prey to the lack of ability to modulate voice volume so I was constantly fiddling with the volume while driving, which I HATE doing.
4, highly recommended with the above warnings as a caveat, stars.
My thanks to libro.fm and Naxos AudioBooks for an ALC of this book to listen to and review.
LOTS of warnings for this one, including child abandonment, parental death, underage drinking, sex and drug addiction.
This is a fictionalized memoir/autobiographical fiction, where creative license is taken with dates, people, conversations and places, but has a strong core of truth to it.
It FEELS true. It reminded me of Requiem for a Dream, the movie with Jennifer Connelly. It starts off all happy and hopeful and ends in dashed dreams and drug dependency.
This is NOT for the faint of heart, that is to be sure. Be warned.
The narrator had a lovely voice, but she fell prey to the lack of ability to modulate voice volume so I was constantly fiddling with the volume while driving, which I HATE doing.
4, highly recommended with the above warnings as a caveat, stars.
My thanks to libro.fm and Naxos AudioBooks for an ALC of this book to listen to and review.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 30, 2012
This book is subtitled "a biographical novel," and for me that was an insurmountable problem. As a novel, it's tedious and lifeless -- no plot, story, character development, nothing. Reading it as an autobiography, I was constantly questioning which events actually happened and which were invented or enhanced. We all remember events differently from others present at the same time, but this book seems to have the intention to deliberately monkey with the facts. So, if it's not really a novel and not really a biography, what is it? Boring, I'd say. Had I read some of the author's earlier works, I might feel quite differently, of course.
June 18, 2022
18 June 2022: copying my text updates under the spoiler tag in case they are disappeared:
June 21, 2019
Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education is the first book by Sybille Bedford which I have picked up. It straddles the line between fiction and non-fiction, presenting as it does an exaggerated version of Bedford's own childhood and young adulthood. Jigsaw was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 1989.
Bedford was born in Germany, and educated in Italy, England, and France. Jigsaw subsequently takes place in each of these countries. The novel-cum-memoir has been split into five sections, which largely follow the author's geographical journey. It begins with a series of her earliest memories. Whilst in the Danish seaside town of Skagen as a toddler, the narrator recollects: 'What I wanted was to get into the water. But between the sand and the water there lay a thick band of small fish, dead, wet, glistening fish. The whole of me shrivelled with disgust. Nanny, who wore boots and stockings, picked me up and lifted me over the fish. I was in the water - coolness, lightness, dissolving, bliss: this is the sea, I am the sea, here is where I belong. For ever.'
We move from Denmark to a southern corner of Germany, where the three-year-old narrator is living with her parents in 1914. The uncertainty of war forces the family to stay with relatives in Berlin the following year, in a 'large, dark house, over-upholstered and over-heated; the inhabitants never stopped eating. Some were exceedingly kind, some were critical of our presence.' The context, both historical and social, has been woven in well, and it proved to be the element which I was most interested in within Jigsaw; the inflation of German currency, convoluted train journeys during wartime, moving around a lot due to money troubles, and being sent away to school particularly fascinated me. I also enjoyed reading about the differences which the narrator discusses between places which she had lived in. I took in, with interest, the allusions Bedford made of not feeling as though she had a homeland, as she moved around so much as a child. However, the emphasis upon this element was spoken about far too briefly for my personal taste.
The narrator is open about her relationships with her parents. She realises that her father loved her in retrospect, 'but - this is the unhappy part - he could not show his affection, only his anxieties, his fretting, his prohibitions... And I with some curious callousness, with the arrogance of a lively, ignorant, if intelligent child, felt impatience with him and contempt. He also created fear; perhaps because he was not reachable by any give and take of talk, perhaps because of the aura of solitariness about him. Today we might call it alienation.' Her interactions with her mother too are far from what she would have liked: 'I was interested - and influenced - by my mother's general opinions, but dreaded being alone with her. She could be ironical and often impatient; she did not suffer little fools gladly. That I was her own made not a scrap of difference... Compassionate in her principles, she was high-handed even harsh in her daily dealings. Between her and my father there had come much open ill feeling... So in my early years (our rapport came later) I was afraid of my mother, more afraid of her, and in a different way, than I was of my father.' Her parents go on to divorce when she is quite young, and she has to deal with the consequences.
There is a warmth, even a chattiness, to the narrative voice in Jigsaw. Whilst compelling in its way, it never became something that I did not want to put down. Not knowing what was true and what was fabricated, or exaggerated, was something that niggled at me. Some of the scenes in Jigsaw seemed far too strange to be real, but there was no way of being sure. Another thing which I really did not enjoy about the book was the continuous name-dropping which Bedford embarks upon rather early on. I do not feel as though these people, most of whom were mentioned only as asides and not part of the current scenes or plot, added a great deal to proceedings. This, like other parts of the book, felt rather superficial.
Jigsaw is not a badly written piece, but I cannot say that I enjoyed Bedford's prose. The phrasing and descriptions which she employed were largely fine, but there was no vividness or vivacity to the things which she described. There was less description in Jigsaw than I was expecting, as it is far more focused upon people than place; the latter often quickly becomes a dull background, and is barely discussed. Some elements were sped through; others were talked about at length, and therefore felt repetitive.
With a slightly different approach taken by the author, or a clear delineation between what is real or imagined, I feel as though I could have really admired this book. As it was, I found it a little off and jarring; I would have personally preferred to read a straight biography, and not some strange, unknown mixture of biography and novel. Jigsaw simply failed to stand out for me. On the face of it, it sounded like a fascinating concept, but its execution left something to be desired for me as a reader.
Bedford was born in Germany, and educated in Italy, England, and France. Jigsaw subsequently takes place in each of these countries. The novel-cum-memoir has been split into five sections, which largely follow the author's geographical journey. It begins with a series of her earliest memories. Whilst in the Danish seaside town of Skagen as a toddler, the narrator recollects: 'What I wanted was to get into the water. But between the sand and the water there lay a thick band of small fish, dead, wet, glistening fish. The whole of me shrivelled with disgust. Nanny, who wore boots and stockings, picked me up and lifted me over the fish. I was in the water - coolness, lightness, dissolving, bliss: this is the sea, I am the sea, here is where I belong. For ever.'
We move from Denmark to a southern corner of Germany, where the three-year-old narrator is living with her parents in 1914. The uncertainty of war forces the family to stay with relatives in Berlin the following year, in a 'large, dark house, over-upholstered and over-heated; the inhabitants never stopped eating. Some were exceedingly kind, some were critical of our presence.' The context, both historical and social, has been woven in well, and it proved to be the element which I was most interested in within Jigsaw; the inflation of German currency, convoluted train journeys during wartime, moving around a lot due to money troubles, and being sent away to school particularly fascinated me. I also enjoyed reading about the differences which the narrator discusses between places which she had lived in. I took in, with interest, the allusions Bedford made of not feeling as though she had a homeland, as she moved around so much as a child. However, the emphasis upon this element was spoken about far too briefly for my personal taste.
The narrator is open about her relationships with her parents. She realises that her father loved her in retrospect, 'but - this is the unhappy part - he could not show his affection, only his anxieties, his fretting, his prohibitions... And I with some curious callousness, with the arrogance of a lively, ignorant, if intelligent child, felt impatience with him and contempt. He also created fear; perhaps because he was not reachable by any give and take of talk, perhaps because of the aura of solitariness about him. Today we might call it alienation.' Her interactions with her mother too are far from what she would have liked: 'I was interested - and influenced - by my mother's general opinions, but dreaded being alone with her. She could be ironical and often impatient; she did not suffer little fools gladly. That I was her own made not a scrap of difference... Compassionate in her principles, she was high-handed even harsh in her daily dealings. Between her and my father there had come much open ill feeling... So in my early years (our rapport came later) I was afraid of my mother, more afraid of her, and in a different way, than I was of my father.' Her parents go on to divorce when she is quite young, and she has to deal with the consequences.
There is a warmth, even a chattiness, to the narrative voice in Jigsaw. Whilst compelling in its way, it never became something that I did not want to put down. Not knowing what was true and what was fabricated, or exaggerated, was something that niggled at me. Some of the scenes in Jigsaw seemed far too strange to be real, but there was no way of being sure. Another thing which I really did not enjoy about the book was the continuous name-dropping which Bedford embarks upon rather early on. I do not feel as though these people, most of whom were mentioned only as asides and not part of the current scenes or plot, added a great deal to proceedings. This, like other parts of the book, felt rather superficial.
Jigsaw is not a badly written piece, but I cannot say that I enjoyed Bedford's prose. The phrasing and descriptions which she employed were largely fine, but there was no vividness or vivacity to the things which she described. There was less description in Jigsaw than I was expecting, as it is far more focused upon people than place; the latter often quickly becomes a dull background, and is barely discussed. Some elements were sped through; others were talked about at length, and therefore felt repetitive.
With a slightly different approach taken by the author, or a clear delineation between what is real or imagined, I feel as though I could have really admired this book. As it was, I found it a little off and jarring; I would have personally preferred to read a straight biography, and not some strange, unknown mixture of biography and novel. Jigsaw simply failed to stand out for me. On the face of it, it sounded like a fascinating concept, but its execution left something to be desired for me as a reader.
May 27, 2022
An engaging, interesting first person narrative semi autobiographical coming of age, memorable novel, set mainly in the 1920s in France, Italy and England.
Billi, the narrator writes about her childhood and teen years. Her father dies when she is under six years old. Her mother allows Billi to live with friends in England. Meanwhile Billi’s mother lives in Italy and France, eventually marrying a young Italian man, fifteen years younger than her. Billi is encouraged to read and by living in Italy, France and England, learns the languages of these three countries. Billi’s love of reading is encouraged. In France Billi becomes friends with the Huxleys. Aldous Huxley has written ‘Antic Hay’ and is living off his written works.
A very satisfying, rewarding reading experience.
This book was shortlisted for the 1989 Booker Prize.
Billi, the narrator writes about her childhood and teen years. Her father dies when she is under six years old. Her mother allows Billi to live with friends in England. Meanwhile Billi’s mother lives in Italy and France, eventually marrying a young Italian man, fifteen years younger than her. Billi is encouraged to read and by living in Italy, France and England, learns the languages of these three countries. Billi’s love of reading is encouraged. In France Billi becomes friends with the Huxleys. Aldous Huxley has written ‘Antic Hay’ and is living off his written works.
A very satisfying, rewarding reading experience.
This book was shortlisted for the 1989 Booker Prize.
May 7, 2019
This is an autobiographical novel written by Sybille Bedford.
There are some books we do regret when they end, this is a clear example of this statement.
There are some books we do regret when they end, this is a clear example of this statement.
August 4, 2010
Wow.
Okay, this was amazing. And it was in part amazing because I read all of her earlier fiction first, so I had a very good sense of how she was reworking her actual past and how she was reworking the fictional usages she had already made of her actual past.
Is this a post-modern novel? I mean, it is a novel, and yet it's a memoir; the authorial voice talks about the ways she has used the events she's describing in her previous novels, and ... I don't think I can do it all justice in this review, it would need an essay.
It was poignant, beautifully written, very intimate, and absolutely emotionally true, even if some pieces of it were pure fiction. The sense of being in the company of an elderly woman looking back on her life and describing it both as she experienced it in the moment and as she sees it now -- that was intense and lovely. I'm so glad I read this, despite the sorrow of some of the sections.
Okay, this was amazing. And it was in part amazing because I read all of her earlier fiction first, so I had a very good sense of how she was reworking her actual past and how she was reworking the fictional usages she had already made of her actual past.
Is this a post-modern novel? I mean, it is a novel, and yet it's a memoir; the authorial voice talks about the ways she has used the events she's describing in her previous novels, and ... I don't think I can do it all justice in this review, it would need an essay.
It was poignant, beautifully written, very intimate, and absolutely emotionally true, even if some pieces of it were pure fiction. The sense of being in the company of an elderly woman looking back on her life and describing it both as she experienced it in the moment and as she sees it now -- that was intense and lovely. I'm so glad I read this, despite the sorrow of some of the sections.
January 13, 2018
I’m not quite sure what to say about this book. For one, although it is in all the essentials very Bedford-esque, I found it very different to A Legacy (to which this book is purportedly a sequel) or her other works that I’ve read. Secondly, because it’s not quite nonfiction and it’s not quite fiction and I don’t know how to process everything that happens in light of that. And lastly, because everyone seems to be focusing on the coming-of-age aspect while all I can think about is the brilliant but tragic portrayal of in the last hundred pages.
It was an incredible book. But I still need to figure out how it and I fit together.
It was an incredible book. But I still need to figure out how it and I fit together.
October 27, 2023
One of those forgotten gems. Beautifully written.
March 29, 2019
Beautifully written. Heartbreaking. Matter-of-fact, yet dream-like, intimate and delicate in so many aspects. A mesmerising work and a delightful surprise.
Mulled it over and decided for 5 stars.
Mulled it over and decided for 5 stars.
September 25, 2012
Tutto quello che si legge nel libro e' tutto vero. La storia della giovinezza e dell'adolescenza di Sybille detta Billie e' avventurosa, leggera e divertente. Una adolescenza vissuta tra Francia e Inghilterra tra le due guerre frequentando artisti, pittori e sportivi. Un rapporto particolare con una mamma particolare, la frequentazione di coppie, trii e singolari personalità ...tutto fa scorrere questo libro velocemente e ti rimane la voglia di andare a vedere quelle località sulla costa francese di cui parla l'autrice. Cercherò il suo romanzo più famoso. Brava.
April 19, 2017
Twenty years ago, a good friend of mine recommended this book to me. I recently recommended it to my daughter. When she said it was the best book she had ever read I decided I had to re-read it. It's not only as intriguing and fresh as when I read it two decades ago, but Bedford's power to bring relationships to life is all the more impressive.
September 14, 2011
Easy to read tale of an exceptional youth. The most interesting part describes the author and her family and their involvement with the international artist community that lived and worked at the French Riviera during the 1920's and 1930's. Fascinating.
August 5, 2012
This will be a bad review for an amazing book. Because all I can say is: Amazing.
February 3, 2020
Reading may be a guilty pleasure. Is there a phrase for guilty indifference?
Jigsaw proved to induce the latter. I finished the story of Sybille Bedford’s childhood and adolescence with the thought that it was my fault I’d been bored and largely indifferent to her characters.
The story recounts a chaotic upbringing among a privileged, artisitic but rather impoverished set in Germany, Italy, London and particularly the south of France for about 15 years after the First World War.
The frontispiece and an introduction by the writer describers the book uncertainly as ‘a novel’ ‘an unsentimental education’ and ‘a biographical novel.’ That ambiguity was the start of my problem, in that in large part the story lacked the drama of a novel and the draw of a biography of someone about whom I was curious to know more.
Sometimes an intriguing figure is introduced – then kept in the shadows. Bedford writes of a reportedly well-known but unnamed judge with a gambling addiction and who is involved in a secret affair, but adds that of his ‘motives, commitments, feelings I know nothing.’ Aldous Huxley and the poet Roy Campbell appear but the author declines to describe them – because she has written elsewhere about the former and the latter has written extensively about himself.
Maybe so, but for me, who has not had the benefit of reading any of that material, that was not good enough.
The main subject is Bedford herself, and nor was I familiar with her other work. Had I been, the childhood scenes might have acquired more significance in helping to understand the mature woman known from her fiction. As it was, they seemed merely mundane, however well described.
The latter part of the book is spent at Sanary near Toulon among artists and liberal-minded intellectuals leading a hedonistic lifestyle with few responsibilities. ‘We seemed to be growing younger, as though we were living a second youth,’ writes the still youthful author.
Dismissing Mussolini and the idea that there could be another European war, Bedford’s mother settles into a gentle, indulgent, mentally stimulating, naïve indolence. As a colour feature about a halcyon period, those pages may have charmed many; alas not me.
But three stars? Odd incidents stand out, like the young Billi (Sybille) setting up a bogus collection for the Red Cross and pocketing the money, but it’s really in the last 100 pages that the book comes to life, with the inevitable breakdown of insecure relationships and in particular her mother’s tortured addiction to morphine.
Was it never possible for everybody to be happy? Did anything good have to be at somebody else’s expense? Bedford interpolates at various points. Do all women carry the seeds of their own destruction?
Back to that guilty feeling that I’d missed the underlying poignancy of the book. But it took a long time to discover what I might have been missing.
Jigsaw proved to induce the latter. I finished the story of Sybille Bedford’s childhood and adolescence with the thought that it was my fault I’d been bored and largely indifferent to her characters.
The story recounts a chaotic upbringing among a privileged, artisitic but rather impoverished set in Germany, Italy, London and particularly the south of France for about 15 years after the First World War.
The frontispiece and an introduction by the writer describers the book uncertainly as ‘a novel’ ‘an unsentimental education’ and ‘a biographical novel.’ That ambiguity was the start of my problem, in that in large part the story lacked the drama of a novel and the draw of a biography of someone about whom I was curious to know more.
Sometimes an intriguing figure is introduced – then kept in the shadows. Bedford writes of a reportedly well-known but unnamed judge with a gambling addiction and who is involved in a secret affair, but adds that of his ‘motives, commitments, feelings I know nothing.’ Aldous Huxley and the poet Roy Campbell appear but the author declines to describe them – because she has written elsewhere about the former and the latter has written extensively about himself.
Maybe so, but for me, who has not had the benefit of reading any of that material, that was not good enough.
The main subject is Bedford herself, and nor was I familiar with her other work. Had I been, the childhood scenes might have acquired more significance in helping to understand the mature woman known from her fiction. As it was, they seemed merely mundane, however well described.
The latter part of the book is spent at Sanary near Toulon among artists and liberal-minded intellectuals leading a hedonistic lifestyle with few responsibilities. ‘We seemed to be growing younger, as though we were living a second youth,’ writes the still youthful author.
Dismissing Mussolini and the idea that there could be another European war, Bedford’s mother settles into a gentle, indulgent, mentally stimulating, naïve indolence. As a colour feature about a halcyon period, those pages may have charmed many; alas not me.
But three stars? Odd incidents stand out, like the young Billi (Sybille) setting up a bogus collection for the Red Cross and pocketing the money, but it’s really in the last 100 pages that the book comes to life, with the inevitable breakdown of insecure relationships and in particular her mother’s tortured addiction to morphine.
Was it never possible for everybody to be happy? Did anything good have to be at somebody else’s expense? Bedford interpolates at various points. Do all women carry the seeds of their own destruction?
Back to that guilty feeling that I’d missed the underlying poignancy of the book. But it took a long time to discover what I might have been missing.
May 14, 2024
Not a book for everyone, but it is for me. Basically a Bildungsroman (or Künstlerroman) telling the life of a writer from early adolescence until early 20s (picking up the story begun in A Legacy). She grows up under strange and unstable conditions, regularly abandoned by her flaky mom with various guardians, but seeming to mostly thrive and find interest and wonder in all the changes. While in the custody of Catholics, she (who is Jewish) goes all in and volunteers to be the first girl to lead Mass. Fascism sneaks up on her in Austria, but she is able to escape to London. Throughout she displays a great and instinctive love of worldly company, literature, and the energy of big cities. She has some complicated romantic entanglements, with men and women, and then (for about the last third) tells a very dark story of her (a legal minor) being the administrator of her mother's rapidly worsening opiate addiction. This story is somewhat recapitulated in her friend Aldous Huxley's Eyeless in Gaza - Huxley and his wife Maria were close friends, and she wrote his autobiography.
Which brings up the question: how much of this (and A Legacy) is true? An author's note at the end attempts to clear it up. The story is a fictitious collage, put together from true pieces from her life. The relationship with her mother (which she promises at one point not to use in a novel…) is also true. The author's sister is a made-up character, but her affair with a wealthy judge who ruins himself with a gambling addiction is also based on a real person. (In fact, one reader wrote to her correctly identifying the man.) I like Wikipedia's description of Bedford as "a writer of semi-autobiographical fiction"; I guess the modern term would be "autofiction".
Which brings up the question: how much of this (and A Legacy) is true? An author's note at the end attempts to clear it up. The story is a fictitious collage, put together from true pieces from her life. The relationship with her mother (which she promises at one point not to use in a novel…) is also true. The author's sister is a made-up character, but her affair with a wealthy judge who ruins himself with a gambling addiction is also based on a real person. (In fact, one reader wrote to her correctly identifying the man.) I like Wikipedia's description of Bedford as "a writer of semi-autobiographical fiction"; I guess the modern term would be "autofiction".
May 26, 2021
For most part, reading the story of Sybille’s childhood and upbringing evoked a strong wanderlust in me. It also flamed an envious yearning. Tumbling across European resort towns, often without a responsible oversight is the kind of freedom and independence you dream of growing with. Living this dream youth, Billy often looks with amusement at these adults who never grew up, and didn’t expect much wisening from her.
All the adults she meets somehow flout the norms and create their own rules for living in the world. The Robinsons refuse to find a stable income or location, the Kislings experiment with being twins, running buses and a ménage-a-trois, the Nairns keep a curtain drawn on a lifelong affair. And most of all, Sybille’s mother and beau Alassandro touch all bases on non-conformity.
The telling is entirely beautiful, in a riviera style life where days slumber on like on a long holiday. But slowly you also realise that making one’s own choices means that you live through the consequences per your strength. If keeping a young lover about uplifts your spirits, their leaving will fray your nerves and you would have to look for new rules to deal with this affliction. Or if you chose to be magnanimous towards a cheating spouse, their greedy acceptance of this magnanimity could break you apart. Most of these defiant adults look for a companion who can stand by and support all their rules. And thus, in a strange way this memoir is a meditation on companionship and loyalties.
The story will stay with me for a very long time, particularly the end.
All the adults she meets somehow flout the norms and create their own rules for living in the world. The Robinsons refuse to find a stable income or location, the Kislings experiment with being twins, running buses and a ménage-a-trois, the Nairns keep a curtain drawn on a lifelong affair. And most of all, Sybille’s mother and beau Alassandro touch all bases on non-conformity.
The telling is entirely beautiful, in a riviera style life where days slumber on like on a long holiday. But slowly you also realise that making one’s own choices means that you live through the consequences per your strength. If keeping a young lover about uplifts your spirits, their leaving will fray your nerves and you would have to look for new rules to deal with this affliction. Or if you chose to be magnanimous towards a cheating spouse, their greedy acceptance of this magnanimity could break you apart. Most of these defiant adults look for a companion who can stand by and support all their rules. And thus, in a strange way this memoir is a meditation on companionship and loyalties.
The story will stay with me for a very long time, particularly the end.
November 29, 2022
***Possible spoilers below! I'm not hiding the review, because I listened to a podcast featuring Bedford's biographer and so I knew these facts below before reading it, and I don't feel it spoiled anything for me. But fair warning for spoiler purists.***
Based on this loosely autobiographical novel, Sybille Bedford had a wildly unusual childhood. Her experiences of both privilege and privation are so extreme that it's hard to read this in anything other than a voyeuristic manner. If you can relate to her life story, then I'm either very jealous of you or very sorry for you, depending on which parts resonate. Enviably, Bedford grew up shuttling between aristocratic and society families in Germany, France, and England, befriending famous authors, artists, and society types. But she also spent time horribly isolated and practically without education in a decrepit castle, lived in a constant state of financial and personal uncertainty, and finally spent years caring for her mother through the horror of a raging morphine addiction. Bedford's life is almost unimaginable in the modern era, and it's worth reading if only for that.
As to the style, Bedford writes in a slightly self-conscious, self-referential way. But it works and she paints a vivid picture. There were parts of the story that dipped or surged; it wasn't perfectly executed. But it was overall engaging and very unique. 4 stars.
Based on this loosely autobiographical novel, Sybille Bedford had a wildly unusual childhood. Her experiences of both privilege and privation are so extreme that it's hard to read this in anything other than a voyeuristic manner. If you can relate to her life story, then I'm either very jealous of you or very sorry for you, depending on which parts resonate. Enviably, Bedford grew up shuttling between aristocratic and society families in Germany, France, and England, befriending famous authors, artists, and society types. But she also spent time horribly isolated and practically without education in a decrepit castle, lived in a constant state of financial and personal uncertainty, and finally spent years caring for her mother through the horror of a raging morphine addiction. Bedford's life is almost unimaginable in the modern era, and it's worth reading if only for that.
As to the style, Bedford writes in a slightly self-conscious, self-referential way. But it works and she paints a vivid picture. There were parts of the story that dipped or surged; it wasn't perfectly executed. But it was overall engaging and very unique. 4 stars.
March 16, 2022
In her fourth novel, Bedford tells the story of the first few decades of her life. She told this story many times in her books, but it is always worth reading. To recap: Bedford grew up in a sort of genteel poverty in the chateau of her father, an impoverished German aristocrat. On his death she spent her time bouncing between her mother's house among the somewhat-idle-rich in the south of France and boarding among a shabby bohemian crowd in London.
The stuff we all love about Bedford is here. There is the question of whether or not she intends it to be a comedy of manners. There are her curious grammar and syntax choices. There is the food and there is the wine. There is the moment when it all falls apart.
Bedford depicts a lifestyle that makes one feel extraordinarily jealous, even as she gently satirizes (or does she?) the people who took part in it. It makes one want to join the idle rich, or a shallow bohemian dabbler. Or just to have a few more glasses of wine in the afternoon.
I've spent the last few months once again working my way through Bedford's bibliography. This time in preparation for a new biography of Bedford, written by Selina Hastings. Readers who want to know how much of this particular novel is truly biographical might seek that one out.
The stuff we all love about Bedford is here. There is the question of whether or not she intends it to be a comedy of manners. There are her curious grammar and syntax choices. There is the food and there is the wine. There is the moment when it all falls apart.
Bedford depicts a lifestyle that makes one feel extraordinarily jealous, even as she gently satirizes (or does she?) the people who took part in it. It makes one want to join the idle rich, or a shallow bohemian dabbler. Or just to have a few more glasses of wine in the afternoon.
I've spent the last few months once again working my way through Bedford's bibliography. This time in preparation for a new biography of Bedford, written by Selina Hastings. Readers who want to know how much of this particular novel is truly biographical might seek that one out.
June 21, 2018
Is this a memoir or a novel?
Sybille Bedford tells us to what extent her previous work was invented and says that this one is true, apart from some changes of name to protect certain reputations and an allowance for childhood memories of events being incomplete.
As a memoir it is excellent and we can make those allowances. The author had an unusual, interesting childhood and she writes about it well, both the people and the places. Sybille, known within her family as Billi, spends her earliest years with her parents and also her father's first wife's parents in Berlin during the war. Her mother leaves after the war and most of her subsequent childhood is spent in poverty with her father, an over-protective parent, but with an ingenious talent for self-sufficiency. She makes an access visit to her mother and unfortunately her father dies while she is away and she is officially made a ward-of-court. Her mother is a much more negligent parent, given to leaving her daughter alone while she pursues amorous adventures, making laissez-faire arrangements for her education and summoning her across Europe at short notice. As she grows up she gradually makes her own life, but still visits and watches her mother's become more tragic.
As a novel it is less satisfactory, due to a lack of overall theme or dramatic arc. Things happen chronologically, then it stops. I read this as part of the Booker shortlist for the year, so have rated it as a novel.
Sybille Bedford tells us to what extent her previous work was invented and says that this one is true, apart from some changes of name to protect certain reputations and an allowance for childhood memories of events being incomplete.
As a memoir it is excellent and we can make those allowances. The author had an unusual, interesting childhood and she writes about it well, both the people and the places. Sybille, known within her family as Billi, spends her earliest years with her parents and also her father's first wife's parents in Berlin during the war. Her mother leaves after the war and most of her subsequent childhood is spent in poverty with her father, an over-protective parent, but with an ingenious talent for self-sufficiency. She makes an access visit to her mother and unfortunately her father dies while she is away and she is officially made a ward-of-court. Her mother is a much more negligent parent, given to leaving her daughter alone while she pursues amorous adventures, making laissez-faire arrangements for her education and summoning her across Europe at short notice. As she grows up she gradually makes her own life, but still visits and watches her mother's become more tragic.
As a novel it is less satisfactory, due to a lack of overall theme or dramatic arc. Things happen chronologically, then it stops. I read this as part of the Booker shortlist for the year, so have rated it as a novel.
August 12, 2020
Sybille Bedford's account of her life between the two world wars takes us from her childhood in a decaying German schloss after the divorce of her parents, to stints in Italy, and longer stays in London, punctuated by sojourns with her vibrant but erratic mother in the south of France.
Each period of her youth is densely observed, from her unconventional education in London, where she read her way through the greatest writers of the era, visiting the British Museum and National Gallery, and living as a latchkey kid in rented flats in her early teens, to her frequent journeys south.
Her life in Sanary, at that time a small village in Mediterranean France, was lived among artists, exiles and intellectuals, including Aldous Huxley, who became a close family friend.
It's a wonderful chronicle of a vanished age that, as the novelist John Fowles wrote, "will ravish connoisseurs of the lost."
Each period of her youth is densely observed, from her unconventional education in London, where she read her way through the greatest writers of the era, visiting the British Museum and National Gallery, and living as a latchkey kid in rented flats in her early teens, to her frequent journeys south.
Her life in Sanary, at that time a small village in Mediterranean France, was lived among artists, exiles and intellectuals, including Aldous Huxley, who became a close family friend.
It's a wonderful chronicle of a vanished age that, as the novelist John Fowles wrote, "will ravish connoisseurs of the lost."
December 30, 2020
3.8 stars
I guess if you want to tell your life story or a good juicy part of it without offending people living or dead, this is the way you do it. Change some names but otherwise stay close to the truth. It doesn't read like a novel but indeedit purports to be one. For any follower of intrawar Jazz Agey narratives, this book will not disappoint. Some celebrities appear, including Aldous Huxley (Bedford's biography of AH in two volumes may be the best of the lot) and artist Moise Kisling.
The very secret romance between Miss Falkenheim and "Jack" the high exalted London judge has been kept under wraps for 50 years and by today's standard is only worth a shrug, but deliciously and salaciously told. The book is fast moving and lively and holds one's interest most of the time.
But some of the blurbs on the cover--hmmm. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize? SB is one of the best writers in English? Really?
I liked it for the historical accuracy and the richness of detail, especially the automobiles and food.
I guess if you want to tell your life story or a good juicy part of it without offending people living or dead, this is the way you do it. Change some names but otherwise stay close to the truth. It doesn't read like a novel but indeedit purports to be one. For any follower of intrawar Jazz Agey narratives, this book will not disappoint. Some celebrities appear, including Aldous Huxley (Bedford's biography of AH in two volumes may be the best of the lot) and artist Moise Kisling.
The very secret romance between Miss Falkenheim and "Jack" the high exalted London judge has been kept under wraps for 50 years and by today's standard is only worth a shrug, but deliciously and salaciously told. The book is fast moving and lively and holds one's interest most of the time.
But some of the blurbs on the cover--hmmm. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize? SB is one of the best writers in English? Really?
I liked it for the historical accuracy and the richness of detail, especially the automobiles and food.
November 1, 2021
This is the kind of book that really gets under your skin, in the subtlest of ways. Behind the recounting of memories, of feelings and of places, is an upward movement, a striving towards adulthood, towards this seizing of this special knowledge, and obtaining it with little to no guidance. Learning by observation, two wide open eyes taking in the splendor of a world between two wars. Every time I thought, "man I should really put this book back in the library - it's going nowhere" - I felt contented to read about one more afternoon in the Sanary sun. So distracted was I by this picturesque stasis, that when the drama came to a head, it really snuck up on me. It's as if the story drifted away for a while and lulled me into a false sense of peace. Masterful writing, if not a little effete at points.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 17, 2022
I absolutely adored this book. I have read other Bedford titles and have found her to be marvelously entertaining - a terrific writer with a magical way with words. Jigsaw puts Bedford's life in perspective and carries the reader away to the French Riviera during the Second World War. She has an amazing knack of telling her story - one with a great deal of adversity - without any sort of judgement. Bedford is an author whose work is not well known but so worth reading. Her life was amazing and as a keen observer of the human condition, Bedford spins out fabulous prose - sharing all her observations. Thank goodness New York Review of Books agrees and has published several of her titles in their lovely editions. I will say that it makes sense to read A Legacy before reading Jigsaw - both are so rewarding.
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