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Kathleen and Frank: The Autobiography of a Family
Kathleen and Frank is a love story set in the glory days of the British Empire, the last decades before World War I
It is the story of Christopher Isherwood’s parents, the winsome and lively daughter of a successful wine merchant and the reticent, artistically gifted soldier-son of a country squire. They met in 1895 outside a music rehearsal in an army camp and married in 1903 after Christopher’s father returned from the Boer War. Frank was killed in an assault near Ypres in 1915; Kathleen remained a widow for the rest of her life.
Their story is told through letters and Kathleen’s diary, with connecting commentary by Isherwood. Kathleen and Frank is a family memoir, but it is also a richly detailed social history of a period of striking change― Queen Victoria’s funeral, Blériot’s flight across the English Channel, Sarah Bernhardt’s Hamlet , suffragettes, rising hemlines, the beginning of the Troubles in Ireland―the period that shaped Isherwood himself.
As a young man, Isherwood fled the tragedy that engulfed his parents’ lives and threatened his own; in Kathleen and Frank, he reweaves the tapestry of family and heritage and places himself in the pattern.
It is the story of Christopher Isherwood’s parents, the winsome and lively daughter of a successful wine merchant and the reticent, artistically gifted soldier-son of a country squire. They met in 1895 outside a music rehearsal in an army camp and married in 1903 after Christopher’s father returned from the Boer War. Frank was killed in an assault near Ypres in 1915; Kathleen remained a widow for the rest of her life.
Their story is told through letters and Kathleen’s diary, with connecting commentary by Isherwood. Kathleen and Frank is a family memoir, but it is also a richly detailed social history of a period of striking change― Queen Victoria’s funeral, Blériot’s flight across the English Channel, Sarah Bernhardt’s Hamlet , suffragettes, rising hemlines, the beginning of the Troubles in Ireland―the period that shaped Isherwood himself.
As a young man, Isherwood fled the tragedy that engulfed his parents’ lives and threatened his own; in Kathleen and Frank, he reweaves the tapestry of family and heritage and places himself in the pattern.
528 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
7 people are currently reading
460 people want to read
About the author
Christopher Isherwood
164 books1,518 followersEnglish-born American writer Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood portrayed Berlin in the early 1930s in his best known works, such as
Goodbye to Berlin
(1939), the basis for the musical
Cabaret
(1966). Isherwood was a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist.
With W.H. Auden he wrote three plays— The Dog Beneath the Skin (1932), The Ascent of F6 (1936), and On the Frontier (1938). Isherwood tells the story in his first autobiography, Lions and Shadows .
After Isherwood wrote joke answers on his second-year exams, Cambridge University in 1925 asked him to leave. He briefly attended medical school and progressed with his first two novels, All the Conspirators (1928) and The Memorial (1932). In 1930, he moved to Berlin, where he taught English, dabbled in Communism, and enthusiastically explored his homosexuality. His experiences provided the material for Mister Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1938), still his most famous book.
In Berlin in 1932, he also began an important relationship with Heinz Neddermeyer, a young German with whom he fled the Nazis in 1933. England refused entry to Neddermeyer on his second visit in 1934, and the pair moved restlessly about Europe until the Gestapo arrested Neddermeyer in May 1937 and then finally separated them.
In 1938, Isherwood sailed with Auden to China to write Journey to a War (1939), about the Sino-Japanese conflict. They returned to England and Isherwood went on to Hollywood to look for movie-writing work. He also became a disciple of the Ramakrishna monk, Swami Prabhavananda, head of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. He decided not to take monastic vows, but he remained a Hindu for the rest of his life, serving, praying, and lecturing in the temple every week and writing a biography, Ramakrishna and His Disciples (1965).
In 1945, Isherwood published Prater Violet, fictionalizing his first movie writing job in London in 1933-1934. In Hollywood, he spent the start of the 1950s fighting his way free of a destructive five-year affair with an attractive and undisciplined American photographer, William Caskey. Caskey took the photographs for Isherwood’s travel book about South America, The Condor and The Cows (1947). Isherwood’s sixth novel, The World in the Evening (1954), written mostly during this period, was less successful than earlier ones.
In 1953, he fell in love with Don Bachardy, an eighteen-year-old college student born and raised in Los Angeles. They were to remain together until Isherwood’s death. In 1961, Isherwood and completed the final revisions to his new novel Down There on a Visit (1962). Their relationship nearly ended in 1963, and Isherwood moved out of their Santa Monica house. This dark period underpins Isherwood’s masterpiece A Single Man (1964).
Isherwood wrote another novel, A Meeting by the River (1967), about two brothers, but he gave up writing fiction and turned entirely to autobiography. In Kathleen and Frank (1971), he drew on the letters and diaries of his parents. In Christopher and His Kind (1976), he returned to the 1930s to tell, as a publicly avowed homosexual, the real story of his life in Berlin and his wanderings with Heinz Neddermeyer. The book made him a hero of gay liberation and a national celebrity all over again but now in his true, political and personal identity.
With W.H. Auden he wrote three plays— The Dog Beneath the Skin (1932), The Ascent of F6 (1936), and On the Frontier (1938). Isherwood tells the story in his first autobiography, Lions and Shadows .
After Isherwood wrote joke answers on his second-year exams, Cambridge University in 1925 asked him to leave. He briefly attended medical school and progressed with his first two novels, All the Conspirators (1928) and The Memorial (1932). In 1930, he moved to Berlin, where he taught English, dabbled in Communism, and enthusiastically explored his homosexuality. His experiences provided the material for Mister Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1938), still his most famous book.
In Berlin in 1932, he also began an important relationship with Heinz Neddermeyer, a young German with whom he fled the Nazis in 1933. England refused entry to Neddermeyer on his second visit in 1934, and the pair moved restlessly about Europe until the Gestapo arrested Neddermeyer in May 1937 and then finally separated them.
In 1938, Isherwood sailed with Auden to China to write Journey to a War (1939), about the Sino-Japanese conflict. They returned to England and Isherwood went on to Hollywood to look for movie-writing work. He also became a disciple of the Ramakrishna monk, Swami Prabhavananda, head of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. He decided not to take monastic vows, but he remained a Hindu for the rest of his life, serving, praying, and lecturing in the temple every week and writing a biography, Ramakrishna and His Disciples (1965).
In 1945, Isherwood published Prater Violet, fictionalizing his first movie writing job in London in 1933-1934. In Hollywood, he spent the start of the 1950s fighting his way free of a destructive five-year affair with an attractive and undisciplined American photographer, William Caskey. Caskey took the photographs for Isherwood’s travel book about South America, The Condor and The Cows (1947). Isherwood’s sixth novel, The World in the Evening (1954), written mostly during this period, was less successful than earlier ones.
In 1953, he fell in love with Don Bachardy, an eighteen-year-old college student born and raised in Los Angeles. They were to remain together until Isherwood’s death. In 1961, Isherwood and completed the final revisions to his new novel Down There on a Visit (1962). Their relationship nearly ended in 1963, and Isherwood moved out of their Santa Monica house. This dark period underpins Isherwood’s masterpiece A Single Man (1964).
Isherwood wrote another novel, A Meeting by the River (1967), about two brothers, but he gave up writing fiction and turned entirely to autobiography. In Kathleen and Frank (1971), he drew on the letters and diaries of his parents. In Christopher and His Kind (1976), he returned to the 1930s to tell, as a publicly avowed homosexual, the real story of his life in Berlin and his wanderings with Heinz Neddermeyer. The book made him a hero of gay liberation and a national celebrity all over again but now in his true, political and personal identity.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
July 15, 2018
While ostensibly a biography of Isherwood's parents, Kathleen and Frank; it is also revealing about the author. Kathleen's daily diary entries -- and letters from Frank -- are excerpted from the 1880s through the 1940s (with editing, context, and continuity provided by the author).
Almost the first half of the book covers the pair's frustrating four year engagement (though Frank was an aristocrat, Kathleen's father was obstinately against the marriage because, not being the heir, he was penniless and had to work). During this time, Frank (a reluctant career soldier with the temperament of an artist) was stuck in South Africa during the Boer War.
I thought it got a lot more interesting after the pair finally managed to tie the knot in 1903 (despite Kathleen's father's objections). We get a lot more history of Marple, the family estate which was built by Isherwood's ancestor, "The Regicide" Henry Bradshaw. We also get more stories of the author himself as a child, along with various ghost stories; near civil war in Ireland; and the lead up to World War I (which Kathleen apparently did not see coming, she was so preoccupied with Ireland).
To anyone reading this in an era where "lean and mean," and the ability to incessently "pivot" and "reinvent" is a virtue, the pace of life in Victorian England seems almost maddeningly slow. But maybe that was not such a bad thing after all.
Almost the first half of the book covers the pair's frustrating four year engagement (though Frank was an aristocrat, Kathleen's father was obstinately against the marriage because, not being the heir, he was penniless and had to work). During this time, Frank (a reluctant career soldier with the temperament of an artist) was stuck in South Africa during the Boer War.
I thought it got a lot more interesting after the pair finally managed to tie the knot in 1903 (despite Kathleen's father's objections). We get a lot more history of Marple, the family estate which was built by Isherwood's ancestor, "The Regicide" Henry Bradshaw. We also get more stories of the author himself as a child, along with various ghost stories; near civil war in Ireland; and the lead up to World War I (which Kathleen apparently did not see coming, she was so preoccupied with Ireland).
To anyone reading this in an era where "lean and mean," and the ability to incessently "pivot" and "reinvent" is a virtue, the pace of life in Victorian England seems almost maddeningly slow. But maybe that was not such a bad thing after all.
September 11, 2018
"Kathleen and Frank" are Christopher Isherwood's parents. After their deaths, he and his brother pored through their collected diaries and letters and realized there was a story worth telling there. Perhaps he should have collaborated with someone more objective for Christopher can't help but tell the story with his perspective via lengthy exposition and interjections. It is almost his autobiography, told in the third person, as cobbled together from his parents' written memories. This made the book, at times, disjointed and hard to read. Things of interest to him don't always interest the reader.
On the plus side, there is plenty to like here. I thoroughly enjoyed the letters between parents when Frank was away at war, first the Boer War and then WWI (and some time in Ireland in between). In the age of text messages and emojis these letters are so well written and heartfelt that one wonders if they could even be written by anyone who grew up in the digital age. Would such a book even be possible today? Recommended for Isherwood fans and those who like history told from correspondence and journals.
On the plus side, there is plenty to like here. I thoroughly enjoyed the letters between parents when Frank was away at war, first the Boer War and then WWI (and some time in Ireland in between). In the age of text messages and emojis these letters are so well written and heartfelt that one wonders if they could even be written by anyone who grew up in the digital age. Would such a book even be possible today? Recommended for Isherwood fans and those who like history told from correspondence and journals.
May 31, 2012
Ironically, I found this the best of Isherwood's books. At last, he was free to indulge himself in his own personal history (and pre-history) without having to cloak it in fiction. Well-researched, it's the kind of individual journey many of us feel we should take. Luckily for Isherwood, his mother and brother retained important correspondence that made the book possible. Highly recommended to those who like personal history and essential reading for anyone interested in Isherwood the man or the writer.
August 25, 2020
3.5 stars.
You're probably not going to read Kathleen and Frank if you don't have a vested interest in Christopher Isherwood, as I do, both because it's far from a popular work of his, and because it is, essentially, just a biography of his parents. For that reason, I'll keep this review relatively short, and say that I found a lot of the material in Kathleen and Frank interesting, particularly regarding Frank's experiences of World War I. Kathleen and Frank's never-ending courtship was also fascinating in the sense that it was so much more complicated than it needed to be. As an insight into Edwardian England and its demise, this book has much to recommend it by. I also found it highly emotive towards the end, in the chapters that dealt with Frank's untimely death and Isherwood's subsequent mythologising of him as Dead (anti-)Hero Father. Generally, the sections of this text where Isherwood's narrative voice rings through clearly were great. What I had an issue with were the long, long swathes of text which were just one letter or diary entry after another with no exposition around it. I feel to an extent like Isherwood couldn't decide whether to write a straight biography of his parents or publish a collection of their diaries and letters, and, as a result, this book felt so choppy in places. If he'd been choosier with his quotations, or integrated them into the narrative a bit more, I'm sure that I would have enjoyed this book more than I did. All this being said, though, Kathleen and Frank was a very worthwhile read, and more than worth a look if you want a little more insight into Isherwood's life and background.
You're probably not going to read Kathleen and Frank if you don't have a vested interest in Christopher Isherwood, as I do, both because it's far from a popular work of his, and because it is, essentially, just a biography of his parents. For that reason, I'll keep this review relatively short, and say that I found a lot of the material in Kathleen and Frank interesting, particularly regarding Frank's experiences of World War I. Kathleen and Frank's never-ending courtship was also fascinating in the sense that it was so much more complicated than it needed to be. As an insight into Edwardian England and its demise, this book has much to recommend it by. I also found it highly emotive towards the end, in the chapters that dealt with Frank's untimely death and Isherwood's subsequent mythologising of him as Dead (anti-)Hero Father. Generally, the sections of this text where Isherwood's narrative voice rings through clearly were great. What I had an issue with were the long, long swathes of text which were just one letter or diary entry after another with no exposition around it. I feel to an extent like Isherwood couldn't decide whether to write a straight biography of his parents or publish a collection of their diaries and letters, and, as a result, this book felt so choppy in places. If he'd been choosier with his quotations, or integrated them into the narrative a bit more, I'm sure that I would have enjoyed this book more than I did. All this being said, though, Kathleen and Frank was a very worthwhile read, and more than worth a look if you want a little more insight into Isherwood's life and background.
November 5, 2025
Not a game changer or a deep dive but a soft step into a British family before, during, and after WWI. I love reading letters and diaries so this is a prefect book for me.
Quotable:
March 10, 1896 Went to a Goethe lecture. Miss J. H. did not attend it but careened up and down outside on her bicycle. Why? Consider a bicycle most unseemly for a woman with grey hair.
Have you ever longed to be a gypsy? I've read George Borrow and sympathized with his vagrancy and love of knocking about... and do you know, now that I am a wanderer and go to sleep under the sky, I long for it sometimes more than ever, to have a little cart and a little tent beside it and wander about from countryside to countryside at your own sweet will, not with a train of soldiers. Don't you think it would be heavenly or does your love of "things" come in your way?
To realize happiness is the saddest of all joy, for the truly happy are those whose happiness is a matter of course.
D.O.D. = "Dear Old Dad"?
Quotable:
March 10, 1896 Went to a Goethe lecture. Miss J. H. did not attend it but careened up and down outside on her bicycle. Why? Consider a bicycle most unseemly for a woman with grey hair.
Have you ever longed to be a gypsy? I've read George Borrow and sympathized with his vagrancy and love of knocking about... and do you know, now that I am a wanderer and go to sleep under the sky, I long for it sometimes more than ever, to have a little cart and a little tent beside it and wander about from countryside to countryside at your own sweet will, not with a train of soldiers. Don't you think it would be heavenly or does your love of "things" come in your way?
To realize happiness is the saddest of all joy, for the truly happy are those whose happiness is a matter of course.
D.O.D. = "Dear Old Dad"?
August 24, 2024
I picked this up because it was by Christopher Isherwood, which is all the endorsement I need, though I couldn’t quite imagine why I’d be interested in a 500 page edit of his parents’ diaries and letters.
Turned out I was interested, in the way that you’d be interested in snooping through the private thoughts of pretty much anyone. Kathleen and Frank aren’t the most remarkable people, but they’re not boring either, and you get to know them so well that they feel like acquaintances from your own life. Which makes the end crushingly, agonizingly sad.
And there are many twists and surprises throughout the story: for example, around page 300 it suddenly morphs into a quite hair-raising ghost story lasting 25 pages, and then normal service resumes.
If you like Isherwood, you’ll probably like this.
Turned out I was interested, in the way that you’d be interested in snooping through the private thoughts of pretty much anyone. Kathleen and Frank aren’t the most remarkable people, but they’re not boring either, and you get to know them so well that they feel like acquaintances from your own life. Which makes the end crushingly, agonizingly sad.
And there are many twists and surprises throughout the story: for example, around page 300 it suddenly morphs into a quite hair-raising ghost story lasting 25 pages, and then normal service resumes.
If you like Isherwood, you’ll probably like this.
August 9, 2019
Like almost everything of Isherwood's, this is engaging and astute, but it's also perhaps a bit long (I think by some distance the longest of all his books). Most of the work is based on his mother's journals and family letters, and I don't really feel that omitting half of them would materially alter the impact of the book. That said, I read it on a long train journey in Spain, and it was an ideal companion for long stretches of meseta.
January 12, 2015
Reviewed by Sergiu Pobereznic (author) amazon.com/author/sergiupobereznic
This was a most interesting novel. A true story about the author's parents. A detailed account of their prolonged courtship that went against the wishes of Kathleen's father.
It is told through Kathleen's diaries, something she did for many decades (60–70 yrs.) and Frank's constant flow of letters to her from various parts of the world.
This is a tale of epic proportions that spans from the Boer War in which Frank fought (one reason for their long courtship) through to the trenches of The Great War in France... WW I. Frank fought in this war too. In one of his letters from the trenches at Ypres he writes with a dispirited tone: "Surely I have earned some peace by now..." or words to that effect. In-between those two wars he also served in Ireland during the crisis of Home Rule.
However, no matter where Frank was, he tried to see beauty in the world and in true British fashion he kept a 'stiff upper lip'. He loved art and literature as did Kathleen. Perhaps their close 'friendship' and mutual interest in literature and art was what prevented them from becoming intimate much sooner – I believe they were too alike in their interests. That and Kathleen's father. His future son-in-law's finances were all he was interested in. Frank would never be good enough for his daughter and he made sure that Frank was aware of this, often.
In Kathleen, Frank had met his match. She was a strong willed woman with defined and well informed views of the world around her. Very likeable lady.
Interspersed throughout the diary entries and letters are Christopher's own words. He analyzes the meaning behind the correspondence and adds his own well informed perspective on the situation. He does this with great refinement and nuance adding the necessary layer to a fine tome. The three distinct narratives work extremely well, holding the interest of the reader. Christopher must have spent a long time researching and shaping this work.
Mostly I enjoyed the historical aspect of the story. This was a time of great change in the world and it was wonderful to experience it through a love story of that epoch. All the events around the tale, the wars etc, I have read about countless times before. But to see it told by people actually living the moments, joyous or tragic, on a daily basis, certainly touched me.
Although I enjoyed the whole work from beginning to end, on reflection I will say that it may be a little too long for some. The book is a very dense 500 pages and some details could have been omitted. The first 5% could have been edited out with no great loss. Personally I had no problem with that, but I know that others may find it so.
I have not previously read any other works by this Mr Isherwood, but on the strength of this I will certainly be looking into Mr. Norris Changes Trains, The World in the Evening and A Single Man. The latter I have seen as a movie and thought it was excellent.
Kathleen and Frank was a wonderful reading experience, but be aware that it requires some commitment from the reader.
– Sergiu Pobereznic– (author)
amazon.com/author/sergiupobereznic
This was a most interesting novel. A true story about the author's parents. A detailed account of their prolonged courtship that went against the wishes of Kathleen's father.
It is told through Kathleen's diaries, something she did for many decades (60–70 yrs.) and Frank's constant flow of letters to her from various parts of the world.
This is a tale of epic proportions that spans from the Boer War in which Frank fought (one reason for their long courtship) through to the trenches of The Great War in France... WW I. Frank fought in this war too. In one of his letters from the trenches at Ypres he writes with a dispirited tone: "Surely I have earned some peace by now..." or words to that effect. In-between those two wars he also served in Ireland during the crisis of Home Rule.
However, no matter where Frank was, he tried to see beauty in the world and in true British fashion he kept a 'stiff upper lip'. He loved art and literature as did Kathleen. Perhaps their close 'friendship' and mutual interest in literature and art was what prevented them from becoming intimate much sooner – I believe they were too alike in their interests. That and Kathleen's father. His future son-in-law's finances were all he was interested in. Frank would never be good enough for his daughter and he made sure that Frank was aware of this, often.
In Kathleen, Frank had met his match. She was a strong willed woman with defined and well informed views of the world around her. Very likeable lady.
Interspersed throughout the diary entries and letters are Christopher's own words. He analyzes the meaning behind the correspondence and adds his own well informed perspective on the situation. He does this with great refinement and nuance adding the necessary layer to a fine tome. The three distinct narratives work extremely well, holding the interest of the reader. Christopher must have spent a long time researching and shaping this work.
Mostly I enjoyed the historical aspect of the story. This was a time of great change in the world and it was wonderful to experience it through a love story of that epoch. All the events around the tale, the wars etc, I have read about countless times before. But to see it told by people actually living the moments, joyous or tragic, on a daily basis, certainly touched me.
Although I enjoyed the whole work from beginning to end, on reflection I will say that it may be a little too long for some. The book is a very dense 500 pages and some details could have been omitted. The first 5% could have been edited out with no great loss. Personally I had no problem with that, but I know that others may find it so.
I have not previously read any other works by this Mr Isherwood, but on the strength of this I will certainly be looking into Mr. Norris Changes Trains, The World in the Evening and A Single Man. The latter I have seen as a movie and thought it was excellent.
Kathleen and Frank was a wonderful reading experience, but be aware that it requires some commitment from the reader.
– Sergiu Pobereznic– (author)
amazon.com/author/sergiupobereznic
September 23, 2014
A look at life from the Victorian age through the First World War through the landed gentry. Christopher Isherwood, renowned author of the Berlin Stories and A Single Man, among many other great works has combed through his mother's, (Kathleen Machell-Smith Isherwood) diaries, kept daily for 70 odd years and his late father's (Lt. Col. Francis E. Bradshaw Isherwood) letters to his beloved wife. The Bradshaw-Isherwood's land holding outside Manchester was not great, but prominent enough to impress Kathleen, whose people had worked themselves up from what was looked down upon as "trade". She and Frank's long courtship delayed by war and her silly father produced the most charming letters, as well as an eye witness account from Frank out in South Africa during the Boer War. Later Kathleen's diaries describe her happiest days and village life at Wiberslegh, the country Manor House to which she, Frank and little Christopher live not far from "Marples" the Isherwood family Estate, where Frank's parents live, which will be inherited by Frank's elder brother, Henry. As a professional soldier, Frank is called upon to take his York & Lancashire regiment to Limerick as Ireland is in a state of crisis with Home Rule in the air in 1913. The family, now includes baby brother, Richard, Nanny, a baby nurse to both boys, decamps to Ireland. In less than a year, Ireland will seem a dream as all Europe is at war and 45 year old Frank will bade farewell to Kathleen and his sons and ships to France and the trenches.
Christopher Isherwood's contentious relations with Kathleen speak loudest in his life's choices. He analyzes this to a fare the well in this tomb. It is a universal truth that we all act in reaction to something else. Would it were without this relationship such wonderful writing, as Mr. Norris, The Berlin Stories, would not have been written.
Christopher Isherwood's contentious relations with Kathleen speak loudest in his life's choices. He analyzes this to a fare the well in this tomb. It is a universal truth that we all act in reaction to something else. Would it were without this relationship such wonderful writing, as Mr. Norris, The Berlin Stories, would not have been written.
February 28, 2009
As a sucker for WWI, this collection of diaries and letters fromthe author's parents seemed right up my alley. And it many ways it was. Kathleen and Frank's story is lyrical and tragic. Both were great writers (not always the case in diaries), and the interuptions by Christopher added depth and context to the story.
But it is a very long book, one that I think could have been easily cut by at least 100 pages. When I picked it up, I thought much more of the book would be about WWI, when in reality the vast majority is about their prolonged courtship.
Recommended, but it's a commitment.
But it is a very long book, one that I think could have been easily cut by at least 100 pages. When I picked it up, I thought much more of the book would be about WWI, when in reality the vast majority is about their prolonged courtship.
Recommended, but it's a commitment.
August 27, 2013
This book draws you in via Kathleen's diaries and Frank's letters from their courtship during the Boer War where Frank served to marriage and Frank's final days at Ypres with Christopher providing a fascinating commentary on his forbears and upbringing.
November 16, 2008
Absolutely engaging story of Isherwood's parents, taken from their letters and his mother's diaries. Paints the time and place quite vividly.
Read
May 25, 2016I really could not get into this book.
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August 4, 2016
Cast o' characters:
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Want to read
May 11, 2017Recommendation from @kstarnes - 1/17/2017
June 18, 2018
My husband and I read this book together. We loved it. I was especially fascinated by how modern these two were in their letters and diaries. If you didn't know the late-Victorian--early-20th century timeframe of this book, it could just as easily be two current people speaking of their lives. Christopher Isherwood's editing of his parents' letters and mother's diaries (which she kept for over 50 years) is masterful. We read this book aloud, taking our time, and over the months we grew very close to this family.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews