We have read the review of ‘West’ which Jan Morris wrote for the current issue of IWA’s journal Agenda and when Sir Andrew Motion wrote his review of the book in The Guardian, 24/07/2010, we commented that ‘we relished the element of damning with faint praise.’ We feel Jan Morris’s review has similarities. There are several ideas which could be thought ‘tongue in cheek’ and we were intrigued.

Certain words and phrases she used struck us — written as they were of a book in which, as Sir Andrew Motion pointed out, our deceased sister is a main character:   ‘… fertile imagination’;  ‘a wife died’. (Actually, she was not his wife, as Sir Andrew picked up — only to be ‘corrected’ by ‘Melangell’ (JP?) on the comments thread lyingly stating that she was, and Jac planned to terminate the relationship had she lived.)

‘Given the imaginative genius of its author, though, and the somewhat elusive substance of his recollections…’;   ‘…that dreaded moment of diagnosis’;   ‘…and he himself was diagnosed with terminal cancer.’ (For the record, we have been told that Jim Perrin was obliged to admit that he does not have cancer. Ref. our post: ‘Was Jim Perrin in Ariège for the sake of his health?’) Continue reading →