A Corner of Paradise : A love story (with the usual reservations)

ISBN-13: 9780099581864 / Angielski / Miękka / 2014 / 224 str.

Brian Thompson

Opis

A charming and unconventional love story from Costa prize-winning memoirist Brian Thompson.
In 1973, Brian Thompson kissed the impossibly glamorous Elizabeth North for the first time, in a busy supermarket car park along the Leeds ring road. This is the story of the unexpectedly joyous consequences -- ones to baffle many, not least themselves -- until her death, aged 78.
Both were writers, though very different in ambition and achievement. They came from opposite ends of the social register she an Admiral's daughter, he the descendant of unruly Cockney eccentrics. She was by nature a solitary (though one with four children). He was loud, incurably facetious and needy.
''It's you and me, girl. It''s only ever about you and me, ' he once told her much too fervently.
''Yes', she replied with her biting honesty. 'Yes -- with the usual reservations'.
From a tiny Harrogate terrace, to the deeply un-picturesque French farmhouse where they spent their summers, Brian and Liz battled their way to a heartrending goodbye in an Oxford hospital ward. In many ways, their partnership was 'an exercise in asymmetry' -- yet, despite the conflicts, they emerge in this deeply-felt memoir as a couple who were lucky enough to find their corner of paradise in one another.