Remembering I’d written about Dirk Bogarde before I popped his name into my search engine. Lo and behold it comes up with several entries:
- This one from May last year where I scribbled a few words about the third book in this volume.
- This one from October 2009 where I fangirled about his acting.
- This one from August 2009 where I get incredibly frustrated about my reading. Today’s book appears on my TBR Pile. In this I note my TBR pile is very short and probably almost comes up to my knee. Man, how things have changed, sort of.
Today’s book is actually four books in one. I only read the first two in this volume as I remember reading the others in a previous lifetime. Each book covers a different portion of his life. We get to see how he got his start in acting and how hard he had to work in order to get that start. Later on he illustrates his success for us. At one point we’re let into his friendship with Judy Garland.
This is a fabulous book. For all the reasons detailed in the previous paragraph but also for his turn of phrase. Bogarde talks about orbiting “Mars, the Moon, Saturn and Venus” when losing his virginity.
I’ve marked page 189 with “muse arrived”. This is the page where Bogarde finds how to write. It’s also the page that details how scared he is by the realisation that he can kill. Why does he realise this? He’s currently in WWII, an event that has brought the muse forth for many people.
What caused me much anguish were the typos. Far too many of them. Words run together, incorrect spellings and missing letters. I’m sure it’s only in this volume and not in others. I have no hesitation in linking to the first book in this volume for you. A Postillion Struck by Lightning shows his family and his nanny/housekeeper/whatever-position-she-holds-in-the-family-house. His attention to characterisation is pretty good. I can almost picture Lally.
I won’t be keeping this volume. Individual books are on my shelf and I don’t really need to double up.