i had never heard of howard. i don't remember buying the book. i want to read her books now. i wish i could see the bbc cazalet chronicles. she was very beautiful with not much taste in men. do any of us understand other women's love choices? she puts it to low self esteem. i'm not sure. i think some women choose married men because they can keep their own lives. ( )

So much of the Cazalet chronicles came from EJH's own life. There are bits of her in Polly, Louise and Clary. Her life was quite extraordinary: there hardly seems to have been a literary figure in Britain in the post-war period she didn't know. She made a lot of mistakes in her personal life and she examines them in ruthless detail. She died early this year and I hope that those who were moved to hear of her death might come across Slipstream and find out more about her. She was utterly fascinating. ( )

A very interesting book. It is so closely related to the Cazalet Chronicles, but the writers voice is much more affecting. She struggles a lot with self esteem, making many steps in life that she comes to feel some sorrow and regret about. You can see Louise in her account, but also Clary, and that shows what a mixture of different character traits she had. It is quite sad to think now she too has died, joining many great writers of the 1950-1990 s. ( )

This memoir which is more of an autobiography really, was published in 2002 when Howard was 79. She looks back at a privileged childhood, a patchy education, an adolescence in WW2 and an adulthood with a frequent amount of highs and lows.

In her preface Howard says:
"Speaking as a very slow learner, I feel as though I have lived most of my life in the slipstream of experience. Often I have had to repeat the same disastrous experience several times before I got the message. That is still happening. I do not write this book as a wise, mature, finished person who has learned all the answers, but rather as someone who even at this late stage of seventy-nine years is still trying to change, find things out and do a bit better with them."

Howard's privileged upbringing, renowned good looks and an artistic and literary nature didn't lead to an easy, charmed life. In early life she found it difficult to please her mother who admitted to preferring her brother. She was close to her father until a point in her teens, when to her shock he started to show a sexual interest in her. She immediately avoided seeing him alone.

As a child Howard was not considered pretty but photos show how the skinny little girl with a narrow face and wide mouth developed into a young woman with long legs, high cheekbones and a sultry looking mouth. It is easy to see how she attracted the considerable amount of attention she did from men. Yet many of these men were predatorial types and many were married. Howard's receptivity to attention lead to many short term relationships which proved to be ultimately destructive. A lack of confidence meant that Howard often seemed to fall in love with the new image of herself that a man could give her, rather than the man himself.

Her first marriage while still in her teens was clearly a mistake and finished after Jane fell in love and had an affair with her brother-in-law. The marriage had produced a daughter whom Howard never really seem to bond with. Often when I read the stories of new mothers from this period of British history I despair and this was no exception. Howard's baby was kept from her except at feeding time when she struggled to cope with a newborn screaming with hunger. When I read about this early experience and considered Howard's uneasy relationship with her own mother, it didn't surprise me that her relationship with her daughter remained poor but it did seem sad.

After her first marriage, most of Howard's relationships were of the short-term nature mentioned above. Her longest and seemingly most satisfying relationship appeared to be with Kingsley Amis. When he turned on her, criticising her for the upper class way of speaking and finding the woman he once loved, suddenly repellent, Howard was understandably shocked and confused.

The one thing which did seem consistent in Howard's life was her writing and despite an often chaotic personal life, she seemed to possess a single minded focus towards her writing which made this the most obviously successful element of her life.

She wasn't political, describing herself as vaguely "not left-wing" and I didn't get much sense of a social awareness of the times she lived through. When WW2 breaks out, she and her friends continue acting in plays and try not to think about what's happening. I actually found this quite believable and refreshing but it could be disappointing to a reader expecting to find out more about the times Howard lives through.

One thing Howard does do is give a lot of information about the (often well-known) people she associated with, befriended, slept with etc! Sometimes this was fascinating and sometimes less so. I got the impression Howard thought people would be more interested in her book, if it was crammed with famous people but these were my least favourite parts of the book.

I found the parts where Howard talked about herself most interesting. Howard clearly suffered from a lack of confidence throughout her life, yet achieved success as an author and undoubtedly charmed and impressed those around her. I found her willingness to admit to mistakes and try to learn from them particularly endearing. ( )

I found this book recently in a large variety store remainder's bin, going very cheaply. I knew her name from the Cazalet series, which I haven't read, but saw the TV series. I snatched it up thinking it would give useful insights into the writing life and writer's mind - it didn't do this. But I read the whole book anyway. I admit to being gobsmacked by her life, mostly I was pretty appalled by how EJH would sleep with just any man who would ask. Including quite easily going away on holidays with married men who would ask her to, even though she knew them to be married, perhaps even knew and was friends with the wives in question; what a different life and world the English upper classes occupy! She laments for so long how all she really wants is to be wanted properly and genuinely by someone and to have more children (she also largely abandoned her only daughter to her first mother-in-law), but why she continued to act in a way that would never bring that about is perplexing. It is probably just as well she never had another child, I don't see how she would have "mothered" any differently. The book is quite eye opening in parts and quite boring in other ways. Lots of references to going away on foreign holidays with other couples just reads like a boring, annual Christmas letter. Are we supposed to know who all these people are? There is a very lenghty "Cast of Characters" at the beginning of the book, but this seems to be more about name dropping, than about covering everyone mentioned in the book. Famous people who barely figure in her life are included in the "Cast of Characters", but other non-famous people who are mentioned many times and are mainstays in her life are not listed at all. Odd.