Mosaic: A Family Memoir Revisited

by Michael Holroyd

A love story, a detective story, a book of secrets, a beautifully written journey into a forest of family trees. After writing the definitive biographies of Lytton Strachey and George Bernard Shaw, Michael Holroyd turned his hand to a more personal subject: his own family. The result was Basil Street Blues , published in 1999. But rather than the story being over, it was in fact only beginning. As letters from readers started to pour in, the author discovered extraordinary narratives that his own memoir had only touched on.

Mosaic is Holroyd's piecing together of these remarkable stories: the murder of the fearsome headmaster of his school; the discovery that his Swedish grandmother was the mistress of the French anarchist Jacques Prévert; and a letter about the beauty of his mother that provides a clue to a decade-long affair.

Funny, touching, and wry, Mosaic shows how other people's lives, however eccentric or extreme, echo our own dreams and experiences.

Genres: Memoir, Biography, Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Michael Holroyd is the author of acclaimed biographies of George Bernard Shaw, the painter Augustus John, Lytton Strachey, and Ellen Terry and Henry Irving, as well as two memoirs, Basil Street Blues and Mosaic. Knighted for his services to literature, he is the president emeritus of the Royal Society of Literature and the only nonfiction writer to have been awarded the David Cohen British Prize for Literature. His previous book, A Strange Eventful History, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography in 2009. He lives in London with his wife, the novelist Margaret Drabble.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/michae...

Reviews

[Lyn Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sure I would have got more out of this if I had read Basil Street Blues (BSB), the first of Holroyd's family memoirs, but I haven't read it and I doubt that I will.

In Mosaic, Holroyd has filled in some of the gaps he discovered in writing BSB (interesting how you often discover gaps when you start to research and write): about his grandfather's mistress, his aunt's former lover and other complex stories of relationships begun and ended.

I found I was far more interested in Holroyd's depiction of people he knew than of the genealogical searches for characters he wanted to track down, and was pleased to see that he at least acknowledged that biographers tread into territory that the subjects might prefer not to be known.

He believes that the dead are fair game, while the living might/should be accorded some rights to privacy. It's a difficult question, but I'm not convinced that the lives of the dead should be free range territory, certainly not if they have friends and family alive. I know that I would hate it.

[Liz Pardey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holroyd is an acclaimed biographer and this book shows how he uses his tgechques to explore the lives of his Aunt Yolande and Ada Marie, his grandfather's mistress. Research, more research, local history records, digging around for letters, portraits, family legend, imagining of possibilities, care, and patience.
What could be dishwater-dull is intriguing and fascinating and over much too soon.

[Lizzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A continuation of the family history told in Basil Street Blues: A Memoir (after he got more info about the family from readers and others). More about the Holroyd family after he received more information from readers and others. I enjoyed it as much as the first book.

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I enjoyed this book, particularly the final long chapter about Agnes May, I'm not sure it would make sense if you hadn't read Basil Street Blues. They're both good books, and in some ways Basil Street Blues needs this coda to finish off some loose ends. But the first book has a tighter structure and is a more pleasing read, hence the extra star.

[Ann Tonks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe I should have read Holyod's first autobiographical missive because I just couldn't get into this.