Second copy for additional release. Here are my comments from the copy that I read:

"This was very interesting! It focused on Athill's professional, rather than personal, life -- although details about her personal life did make an appearance. I appreciated the fact that Athill was honest about her own foibles. It is always refreshing to see that in a memoir. It was interesting to read about the publishing business in the second half of the twentieth century, which was a very different endeavor at that time than it is now. I wasn't familiar with all of the authors and works discussed, of course, but that didn't detract from my enjoyment of the memoir. The book bogged down for me in one place, which was a long chapter about Jean Rhys, author of Wide Sargasso Sea, and her many problems. Perhaps that section could have been pared a bit, but it's a minor quibble. A good read!"

Reserving for the Nonfiction VBB.

Description from Amazon:

"For nearly five decades, Diana Athill edited (nursed, coerced, coaxed) some of the most celebrated writers in the English language, among them V. S. Naipaul, Philip Roth, John Updike, Jean Rhys, Mordecai Richler, Molly Keane, and Norman Mailer. A founding editor of the prestigious publishing house André Deutsch Ltd., Athill takes us on a guided tour through the corridors of literary London, offering a keenly observed, devilishly funny, and always compassionate insider’s portrait of the glories and pitfalls of making books—spiced with candid insights about the type of people who make brilliant writers and ingenious publishers, and the idiosyncrasies of both. It is both 'wryly humorous' (The New York Times Book Review) and 'full of history, wisdom, and dirt' (The Boston Globe)."

Headed out as a selection from the Nonfiction VBB. Enjoy!

Arrived in the mail - thanks!