Henry Allen has deftly told you his family story and perhaps your family story as well.
Where
We Live is a concise string of pictures painted about childhood homes,
the home of his grandparents, his father's Navy Ship from WWII, his
college dorm, and summer homes.
His descriptions of time and
memories put into words the thoughts and feelings you may have had about
had associated with family and places lived. I had to pause after
reading his essay on summer homes. It truly caused me to put the book
down and pause and think about these summer places where all of our good
memories reside but seem so fleeting.
A book that will enhance your own view of where you've lived.
Difficult for me to add much as a reviewer but it is a
fascinating glimpse into an aristocratic family and the Victorian-era
childhood of Sir Osbert Sitwell. For a reader in 2020, the high style of the writing can be almost as challenging as Shakespearian verse to move through. Long, meandering sentences with colons, semi-colons, dashes,
and ellipses, and loaded with vocabulary so rich, you might feel like
you're coming down with verbal gout. Sir Sitwell is highly perceptive of
nature, his family history, and the artistic scene at the time. The
final chapter of the book focuses on a family portrait painted by John
Singer Sargent. The portrait was a sign of status for the parents but the childhood glimpse of the great artist by a young Osbert and his sister Edith influenced them later in life to become artists in their own right. I'll have to let this one sit for a while before I decide on whether I have the stamina to read the other five volumes. In any case,
I'm glad there were writers like Osbert Sitwell with his sensibilities about the world giving us a slice of life that must now sound like an alien world to an audience a little more than a hundred years later.
