Lyndall Gordon grew up in South Africa before studying at Columbia
University and then becoming a respected lecturer at St Hilda's
College, Oxford. She is an award-winning biographer of, amongst
others, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, T. S. Eliot and, recently,
Mary Wollstonecraft. Her expertise as a Research Fellow at Oxford
is put to good use in what could otherwise have been a mundane
story of four friends growing up together in 1950's Capetown;
Gordon has carefully discovered the family history of each of her
beloved friends, adding colour, depth and intrigue to their
individual histories. Gordon has an honest, self-deprecating style
of writing - she always portrays herself as the unfashionable,
impressionable and untalented pal of three gorgeous, charismatic
girlfriends: 'Plainness, if nothing else, absolved me from the
early struggle to look right, but Flora and others, Rosie and
Ellie, took up the business with ironic dedication'. She watches
from the sidelines, as her friends look 'smugly mature in padded
bras hitched to the highest tilt that straps would allow'. Gordon
lost all of these friends in tragic circumstances and is the only
survivor of the four. Her unique skills as a writer of memoir and
biography shine through, in this touching autobiography, originally
conceived in 1988 and now reprinted. 'Shared Lives' is both a
tribute to lost friendships and a testament to the author's
commitment as a writer.(Kirkus UK)
Lyndall Gordon, the acclaimed biographer of T. S. Eliot and
Virginia Woolf, grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, in the 1950s.
This intimate and moving memoir is the story of Rosie, Ellie, and
Romy - her closest friends from childhood until their early deaths.
Daughters of Jewish immigrants, these girls grew into adulthood
together, shaped by their parents' and grandparents' Eastern
European heritages, the stifling atmosphere of their proper girls'
school, South Africa's politics, and the intense pressure within
their bourgeois milieu for early marriage. We meet and follow
Rosie, whose career plans vanish into marriage and motherhood;
Ellie, who became a psychologist but struggled with her own
depressions; Romy, the exuberant rebel who, resisting marriage,
enraged the men who loved her; and Lyndall Gordon herself,
struggling to adjust to the power games of big-time academia. Yet,
though miles distanced them as they grew older and went off to New
York, Oxford, and Paris, their bonds of friendship remained strong,
separated only by their untimely deaths. This heartfelt tribute to
three obscure women who left nothing but their stories, letters,
and memories reveals the significance of their lives, their hidden
possibilities, and, most importantly, the redemptive power of
friendship between women.
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