Pondlife - A Swimmer's Journal (Paperback)

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. _____________________ '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

General

Imprint:	Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	March 2015
Authors:	Al Alvarez
Dimensions:	198 x 129 x 19mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	288
ISBN-13:	978-1-4088-4102-0
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > General Books > Biography > General Promotions
LSN:	1-4088-4102-9
Barcode:	9781408841020

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