Dusk is drawing to a close

Somewhere Towards the End

A legendary British female editor of the 20th century, 89 years old, talks about her single life in old age.
Write down a sincere note about "withering":
The candid voice of a single woman ⅹ New gains in old age;
Compromise and freedom are repeatedly constrained in a woman's life - she deals with the world for survival and protects her spiritual world for herself.
✨ Editor's Recommendation◎ Diana Asier, winner of the Costa Biography Award and the outstanding female editor who discovered VS Naipaul, started her writing career after retiring at the age of 76. Now, at the age of 90, she looks back on her legendary life and writes a humorous and frank old age diary.
She is an editor that writers trust:
◆ In those early years, I would sometimes speak to Francis Windham and Diana Asher in my mind while writing. —VS Naipaul◆ Diana was my first British editor... All who knew her and read her memoirs admire her for her honest, simple and elegant style, her unpretentious personality, and her perseverance in the face of life's ever-shrinking possibilities. She is a model of how to grow old, even if we don't grow old by choice. I was lucky to have her in my life. —Margaret Atwood, however, often couldn't help but complain bitterly about writers:
◆ Sometimes she (Jane Rhys, author of Wide Sargasso Sea) would provocatively declare that she would dye her almost gray hair bright red, but she never did it. I think the reason she didn't do so was not because she didn't have the energy to do it, but because she still had some rationality.
◆ Elias Canetti, the Bulgarian-born Nobel Prize winner in literature, is another example of a negative example. His way of challenging death seems even more foolish than Jane's anxiety. ... His declaration that he "rejects death" finally pushed me to the limit.
◎ An “invisible” old age is the future we will eventually reach;
Asir, a centenarian, wrote this heartfelt record, revealing his aging self to you:
◆ From makeup to clothing, "old women" pay more attention to appearance ◆ It's hard to see a seedling grow into a towering tree ◆ Driving is the "last stubborn"
But there are still stars shining in the twilight of life, and the elderly are still living and growing -
“I have never in my life enjoyed myself so comfortably and for so long as I do now.”
◆ Hormones recede, allowing for clearer thinking ◆ Love is still “happening”
◆ The shy and embarrassing social anxiety has disappeared ◆ I am so lucky that I can actually write ◎ An 89-year-old female senior who is "unmarried" speaks frankly and breaks the shackles of women in traditional concepts of marriage and love:
◆ Enjoy every love relationship effortlessly——
These relationships were exciting, but none were enough to hurt me;
Women can also burn with sex without talking about love.
◆ The concept of fertility that puts “self-feeling” first
(My first reaction after waking up from a miscarriage) I'm alive! I feel whole.
(My calm attitude towards not becoming a mother in the end) I really don’t mind not being able to be a mother.
◎ Small hardcover design, easy to carry around;
The cover is in black and gold, which is heavy yet bright: the title is stamped in gold, and the cover is printed with the author's silhouette in ink painting style - although dusk has arrived, the scenery is still magnificent.
📖 Content introduction "The Last Days" is Diana Asier's representative work. It has won many awards including the Costa Biography Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It is an essay on her life in old age written when she was approaching 90 years old. The words are frank, open-minded and interesting.
She started by talking about the various changes that come with aging, interspersed with memories of her past life. She generously recalled her several love affairs, admitted her indifference to missing out on motherhood, and honestly faced the pain of aging, but still enthusiastically talked about the new experiences she gained in gardening, painting, reading, and writing.
Overall, Asir presents us with a very unique female sample, allowing us to see how an ordinary intellectual woman maintains her independent self while dealing with the world, and ultimately faces aging and the end of life calmly.
✨ Recommended by the media: A perfect old-age memoir - candid, delicate, charming, without any self-pity or sentimentality, and most importantly, beautifully written.
—— Costa Awards judge Diana Asier is 90 years old. Although her life should be full of regrets according to the standards of her time and class for women, she feels that she has no regrets in life.
—The Guardian
Although the subject of The End of the World (old age) is not a pleasant one, Diana Asier's refusal to sugarcoat it, her commitment to candor, and her captivating writing style make it a book of great interest and charm.
—The Washington Post
Her perspective is both bleak and tender, as she discusses her waning libido, her resolute atheism, her growing preference for nonfiction, and the fact that, even in her advanced years, she still spends much of her life caring for those older than herself. The achievement of Asir’s work is that she doesn’t reduce the fascinating details of her life to sermons on life’s wisdom.
—The New Yorker
There is a frank and sincere pleasure in reading it.
— Alice Munro (2013 Nobel Prize in Literature winner)
🏆 Awards ⭐️ 2009 National Book Critics Circle Autobiography Award ⭐️ 2008 Costa Book Award for Biography

2022-07-01

四川人民出版社

Houlang, Houlang Literature

240

9787220126437