Description
| Product ID: | 9781408841020 |
| Product Form: | Paperback / softback |
| Country of Manufacture: | GB |
| Title: | Pondlife |
| Subtitle: | A Swimmer's Journal |
| Authors: | Author: Al Alvarez |
| Page Count: | 288 |
| Subjects: | Memoirs, Memoirs, Coping with / advice about ageing, Coping with old age |
| Description: | Select Guide Rating From the author of The Savage God, a unique memoir of growing old, and a lesson in not going gently into that good nightThe ponds of Hampstead Heath are small oases; fragments of wild nature nestled in the heart of north-west London. For the best part of his life Al Alvarez – poet, critic, novelist, rock-climber and poker player – has swum in them almost daily. An athlete in his youth, Alvarez chronicles what it is to grow old with humour and fierce honesty – from his relentlessly nagging ankle which makes daily life a struggle, to infuriating bureaucratic battles with the council to keep his disabled person’s Blue Badge, the devastating effects of a stroke, and the salvation he finds in the three Ss – Swimming, Sex and Sleep. As Alvarez swims in the ponds he considers how it feels when you begin to miss that person you used to be – to miss yourself. Swimming is his own private form of protest against the onslaught of time; proof to others, and himself, that he’s not yet beaten. By turns funny, poetic and indignant, Pondlife is a meditation on love, the importance of life’s small pleasures and, above all, a lesson in not going gently in to that good night. _____________________'A beautiful unfolding of a story, told in deceptively simple prose but with a great power to move' Sunday Times'The adrenalin still flows in lively extracts' The Times'A marvellous book... it has no business to be as invigorating and absorbing – its success is against the odds' Observer From the author of The Savage God, a unique memoir of growing old, and a lesson in not going gently into that good nightThe ponds of Hampstead Heath are small oases; fragments of wild nature nestled in the heart of north-west London. For the best part of his life Al Alvarez – poet, critic, novelist, rock-climber and poker player – has swum in them almost daily. An athlete in his youth, Alvarez chronicles what it is to grow old with humour and fierce honesty – from his relentlessly nagging ankle which makes daily life a struggle, to infuriating bureaucratic battles with the council to keep his disabled person’s Blue Badge, the devastating effects of a stroke, and the salvation he finds in the three Ss – Swimming, Sex and Sleep.As Alvarez swims in the ponds he considers how it feels when you begin to miss that person you used to be – to miss yourself. Swimming is his own private form of protest against the onslaught of time; proof to others, and himself, that he’s not yet beaten. By turns funny, poetic and indignant, Pondlife is a meditation on love, the importance of life’s small pleasures and, above all, a lesson in not going gently in to that good night._____________________''A beautiful unfolding of a story, told in deceptively simple prose but with a great power to move'' Sunday Times''The adrenalin still flows in lively extracts'' The Times''A marvellous book... it has no business to be as invigorating and absorbing – its success is against the odds'' Observer |
| Imprint Name: | Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
| Publisher Name: | Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
| Country of Publication: | GB |
| Publishing Date: | 2015-04-09 |