RelationsJonathan Cape, 2003 - 279 pages "In this remarkable book, Jane Miller writes about the experiences of being a daughter and a sister, of the intensities of family life and of the illuminations that come from the last days and death of parents. Relations offers a portrait of a record-keeping, middle-class kinship, reaching back into the past, which begins from her parents' long marriage, its mysteries and incompatibilities, their shared sense of themselves as artists - she as a painter, he as a pianist. It was a marriage marked by the dismay it met with from both their families. Writing about these things leads Miller to further explorations: her relations with her maternal grandfather, Redcliffe Salaman, scientist, historian, secular Jew, and his with his devoutly Jewish wife. Her father's family were Unitarian - Dissenters since the 17th century - and her great-grandfather, Collet Dobson Collet, was known for his role in the successful campaign to liberate the press from the 'taxes on knowledge' imposed by government and for his friendship with Karl Marx. Collet's daughter Clara was one of the first women civil servants, and an economist who was involved in the first stirrings of the Welfare State. Here are the t |
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Page 59
... parents lived for the first three years of their married life . Against ele- gant grey shutters , my parents sleep , post - coitally close on their narrow bed , as I do not remember them , while their baby daughter sits up , back ...
... parents lived for the first three years of their married life . Against ele- gant grey shutters , my parents sleep , post - coitally close on their narrow bed , as I do not remember them , while their baby daughter sits up , back ...
Page 68
... parents than for myself , for I liked to imagine them bereft without me . I think now that my exile by the sea confirmed an instinctive sense of myself as an only child and made me long more than any- thing - to be able to swim . Away ...
... parents than for myself , for I liked to imagine them bereft without me . I think now that my exile by the sea confirmed an instinctive sense of myself as an only child and made me long more than any- thing - to be able to swim . Away ...
Page 77
... parents ' lives , alighting occasionally on some sur- prising treasure , often unnoticed as well as uncherished in this house so seldom touched , adorned or added to . The altogether more glamorous relics of my parents ' dead relations ...
... parents ' lives , alighting occasionally on some sur- prising treasure , often unnoticed as well as uncherished in this house so seldom touched , adorned or added to . The altogether more glamorous relics of my parents ' dead relations ...
Contents
Portrait of an Artist | 1 |
The Potato Man | 26 |
Three Sisters | 59 |
Copyright | |
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