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Leftover Life to Kill
Hardcover.
- GenresBiography20th Century
262 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1957
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 29, 2017
She is egotistical, hysterical, jealous and quarrelsome, her own worst enemy, proud and violent." So reads Cyril Connolly's Sunday Times review of this book. Sometimes the critics actually get it right. This book is a long, endless dirge of self-pity. It may read well as a private journal of one's grief, but it should never have been published. I can only surmise that the publishers wanted to capitalize on Dylan Thomas's death and so a book by his widow would have fit that bill nicely.
Published in 1957, this book was surely in progress shortly after Thomas's death. While there is no denying Widow Thomas's lovely facility with language, the passages of intensive breast-beating mea culpas become a teeth-gnashing experience for the reader as well: one wants to put her out of her misery as quickly as possible. One begins to suspect, not long into the book, that her emotions are more on display than they are real.
Throughout, one gets the impression that she has assumed Dylan Thomas's identity: his irreverence, his language, his compulsiveness, his obsessions. She is more of an exhibitionist than DT himself ... if that be possible ... ! so much so that one feels she is leading the reader into a Mad Dance of her own devising.
Had she been able to temper that self-obsession, she might have been a very good writer. As good as DT himself, if not better, ... so many have hinted.
I'm afraid I can't offer much more insight into this one as I was at quite a loss as to why teeth-gnashing, self-indulgence and delirium are worthy subjects to be put on display, without the tempering lessons of humility or self-knowledge.
One doesn't come away from this with any true details of either her own life, or Dylan's -- other than that she is deeply neurotic, and he is dead.
Published in 1957, this book was surely in progress shortly after Thomas's death. While there is no denying Widow Thomas's lovely facility with language, the passages of intensive breast-beating mea culpas become a teeth-gnashing experience for the reader as well: one wants to put her out of her misery as quickly as possible. One begins to suspect, not long into the book, that her emotions are more on display than they are real.
Throughout, one gets the impression that she has assumed Dylan Thomas's identity: his irreverence, his language, his compulsiveness, his obsessions. She is more of an exhibitionist than DT himself ... if that be possible ... ! so much so that one feels she is leading the reader into a Mad Dance of her own devising.
Had she been able to temper that self-obsession, she might have been a very good writer. As good as DT himself, if not better, ... so many have hinted.
I'm afraid I can't offer much more insight into this one as I was at quite a loss as to why teeth-gnashing, self-indulgence and delirium are worthy subjects to be put on display, without the tempering lessons of humility or self-knowledge.
One doesn't come away from this with any true details of either her own life, or Dylan's -- other than that she is deeply neurotic, and he is dead.
December 31, 2020
Excessively convoluted, filled with the most ponderous, purple prose I have ever read from a book NOT put out by a vanity press.
March 1, 2014
Dylan Thomas said that his wife was a better writer than he was. That's what drew me to the books by Caitlin Thomas. This is a brutally honest book by a powerful writer.
January 17, 2026
The self-pity is intense and immense. But otherwise? You may not find much more than self-pity in Caitlin Thomas' signature work.
I was an adolescent when I read this, so I had a certain patience with strong-strong-strong emotional interpretation of EVERYTHING.
Now having read this book is only a bitter memory. Though not bittrerness in competition with Caitlin Thomas' self-pity. More like a shrivelled autumn leaf of self-absorbed tragedy.
Of course she misses her husband, the magnificent poet Dylan Thomas. She might have written this book FOR him. Mercifully, she never had the chance (far as I know) of reading it TO him.
I was an adolescent when I read this, so I had a certain patience with strong-strong-strong emotional interpretation of EVERYTHING.
Now having read this book is only a bitter memory. Though not bittrerness in competition with Caitlin Thomas' self-pity. More like a shrivelled autumn leaf of self-absorbed tragedy.
Of course she misses her husband, the magnificent poet Dylan Thomas. She might have written this book FOR him. Mercifully, she never had the chance (far as I know) of reading it TO him.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews