Al Alvarez

Pondlife (eBook, ePUB)

A Swimmer's Journal

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

From the author of The Savage God, a unique memoir of growing old, and a lesson in not going gently into that good night

The 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.
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'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

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK eBooks
• Seitenzahl: 288
• Erscheinungstermin: 14. Februar 2013
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781408841013
• Artikelnr.: 38285552

Autorenporträt

Al Alvarez was a poet, novelist, literary critic, anthologist, and author of many highly praised non-fiction books on topics ranging from suicide, divorce and dreams - The Savage God, Life After Marriage, Night - to poker and mountaineering - The Biggest Game in Town and Feeding The Rat. His most recent books are Pondlife and Risky Business. He died in 2019.