Scent of Dried Roses

by Tim Lott

Tim Lott's parents, Jack and Jean, met at the Empire Snooker Hall, Ealing, in 1951, in a world that to him now seems 'as strange as China'. In this extraordinarily moving exploration of his parents' lives, his mother's inexplicable suicide in her late fifties and his own bouts of depression, Tim Lott conjures up the pebble-dashed home of his childhood and the rapidly changing landscape of postwar suburban England. It is a story of grief, loss and dislocation, yet also of the power of memory and the bonds of family love.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Autobiography, Mental Health, British Literature, Mental Illness

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Tim Lott is the author of seven novels and a memoir, The Scent of Dried Roses, which won the PEN/J.R. Ackerley Prize. White City Blue won the Whitbread First Novel Award and his young adult book Fearless was shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Book Award. Tim lives with his family in north-west London.

Reviews

[Mark Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptional book that resonated so powerfully that I’m certain it contributed to me feeling ill and not sleeping properly for the week I was reading it. Unsettling and emotionally confronting – this is in no way an easy read. It is also a difficult book to categorise – part memoir, part social history, part psychological case study, part philosophy. It is also a brilliant piece of literature. Parts of it put me in mind of W.G. Sebald, with long meandering tangents triggered by photographs and snippets of folk memory and anecdote. I’ll be thinking about this book for a long time.

[Maureen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this a tough read, for the obvious reasons of subject matter, of course, but also because of the style, tone and structure of the writing.

There some sort of social treatise being explored, but without any real, sustained clarity, warmth or engagement. He is curiously detached about the emerging class that he grew up in, and the decades that shaped his life. He seemed to me to be a bit of a snob - sacrificing your front lawn to create a parking space and get your car off the road, is, apparently, so déclassé that it's a dead giveaway that the area is heading downhill rapidly. Maybe he's never owned a car along with a suburban terraced house, otherwise he'd understand why people replace a scrubby patch of grass that they don't use for a parking space that they will use.


The rest is patchy - at times, very thoughtful, with some new insights into the workings of his family and some aspects of mental health difficulties. At other times, it's overly wordy with an oddly unpleasant sense of self-justification - a point being proved, a defence being mounted - that I found distracting.

I wondered who the real audience is - the public? Himself? The brother he has a tricky relationship with? His therapist?

I feel a bit mean posting this, as it must have taken courage to deal with these things, and to put it down on paper, and that can only be respected. However, is this the best, finished product it could possibly be, for publication? I don't think so. Not yet.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came across this book by pure serendipity, while waiting for the work lift. The title leapt out at me from a shelf of otherwise prosaic biographies and, intrigued, I took a closer look. I'm very glad that I did. The subject matter is hardly a light read - the story of the author's struggle with depression and his mother's ensuing problems with the same condition and subsequent suicide. But it is so beautifully written and such a perceptive analysis of the changing condition and lost worlds of what might be called the 'upper working class' that it is thoroughly engrossing. Lott's family move from inner west London to the working class suburb of Southall only to find it changed beyond recognition by immigration and the cultural 'revolution' of the sixties and seventies that they become adrift and rudderless, increasingly cut off from a world that is changing so rapidly that they are in danger of being left behind. A subtle and sympathetic study of a loving family undermined by the demons of division and depression. C

[Michael ODonnabhain · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book because I live in Southall and Tim is one of the few writers who's written about where I live (okay, it's the other side of the Uxbridge road, but still!). Actually it's a really interesting book about England and subtopia in general. It also deals with depression, suicide and so-called 'mental illness'

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I totally loved this book, which is not a novel, especially the amazing evocations of life in the 1970s onward for working class people. He has an amazing ability to capture detail. Basically it is a very sad story but that is not to give anything away. Difficult to assess his own personality, but easier to understand those of his parents. I shall look for more books by this author.

[Alex Clare · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book, the tone changing. A very personal but oddly distant memoir.

[Claire Titchmarsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Serendipitous find in 2nd-hand bookshop and valued addition to my PMClassics collection. Spine creases all the way through promised that it would be worth the read, and it was.

It felt like the author put a lot of effort and thought into this book and I thank him for writing it as it put into words some hard to express issues I have also faced. It must have been a very difficult process for him yet he bravely addresses issues that are, still, misunderstood or not talked about, out of embarrassment. He comes across as a very honest person who went looking for answers and comes up with a lot of food for thought.

Interesting descriptions of 1950s England and great insight into the roles women may feel compelled to play in their lives. Very acute and detailed analysis of how a sense of identity, or lack of, can be the impossible-to-articulate factor that drives someone into irreversible depression. As the mother of a boy and two girls I also found this book fascinating in terms of understanding my own son's emotional responses, which for me are harder to interpret than those of my daughters.

[Jake Goretzki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty flawless. Very touching as a memoir in itself of prosperous working class 'subtopian' life and social history (you could almost call it an unlikely love letter to the dear, forgotten post-war consensus). Very good on mannerisms and speech too - and that indelible lack of self-confidence that comes with the class inheritance.

More importantly, it's very insightful on depression and survival - and what foolishness still circles all that.

I almost found myself feeling affectionate about West London by the end of it. (Y'see: the mind. It's a mystery).

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a potentially affecting story of Tim Lott's depression and his mother's suicide, set against a backdrop of a rapidly changing Southall. I was very distracted by the fact that Tim can't seem to forgive his parents for being working class, and for that reason comes across as pretentious and unlikeable. The more I read the more I discover how little anyone knew his mother Jean, and even here Tim's story has to eclipse hers.

[eLwYcKe · Rating 3 out of 5]

A difficult, knotty, uncomfortable read for me, about uncomfortable, knotty, difficult people, i.e. you, me, them, us.
I struggled and got bored with the interminable navel gazing and then overwhelmed by a flood of affection for these people, these ordinary lives I recognised, which Mr.Lott so genuinely loves and communicates.
Ultimately I found myself in these pages, my families and friends, so despite my reservations I would recommend this uneasy stroll down memory lane.

[Julie Round · Rating 5 out of 5]

A compelling book, not only because of the depth of feeling but also because I lived in that area through that period. I'll keep the images and memories in my mind for ever. Thank you, Tim.

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t get much out of this book. I’m not sure how much that’s because I’ve reached a saturation point for depression memoirs.

[Xanthe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everyone in this book needs a hug and consult for therapy

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked his evocation of working class life in London through the middle decades of the 20th century. I almost did 4 stars for my rating…. So 3 and a half stars really from me.

[Ipswichblade · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s hard to say that I enjoyed this book as its a difficult read in parts but it is very powerful book and so well written

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is as much a book about depression as it is a biography, an autobiography, a history of English upper working class/lower middle class, of suburbia.
Tim Lott traces back family history to his grandparents' generation in an attempt to make sense of the sudden surprising suicide of his mother Jean and with it paints the picture of his class evolving through history.

Although I bought this book because it deals with depression in a familial environment, I thoroughly enjoyed it throughout. The different themes are seamlessly interwoven as one organic being. An interesting find toward the end of the book made me re-evaluate the 275 pages I had just read - it makes everything previosuly told shine with the light of uncertainty (- in concordance with the book's message: nothing's certain, and we are dependent on made-up truths that we believe to be certain.)

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Were Styron's Darkness Visible the book we're commonly assured it is, it might match up to The Scent of Dried Roses. Memoir, elegy and a serious slice of cultural history all in one, it also knows that the 'little' things in life are anything but.

Lott’s novel Rumours of A Hurricane is worth getting as well.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this very quickly as someone else in book club needed to read it before our next meeting: in all honesty I wished Imhad been able to,take more time with it as it turned out to be far more interesting than I had anticipated. Informative both as a social history and, to some extent, a history of mental,illness treatment. Very interesting.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a great memoir of the late twentieth century with magnificent recall of lost brands and rituals evoking a recent past. For me its most magnificent pages are from p.195 on when the laying bare of mental illness takes over. Very carefully and gently observed

[Annette Kane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I particularly liked this book because the writer is the same age as I am and it is set in West London so I knew a lot of the places he referred to. It was also an interesting and well written book.

[Simonhackwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant,insightful and moving book.