Pondlife: A Swimmer's Journal

Description

From the author of The Savage God, a unique memoir of growing old, and a lesson in not going gently into that good night The ponds of Hampstead Heath are small oases; fragments of wild nature nestled in the heart of north-west London. For the best part of his life Al Alvarez - poet, critic, novelist, rock-climber and poker player - has swum in them almost daily. An athlete in his youth, Alvarez chronicles what it is to grow old with humour and fierce honesty - from his relentlessly nagging ankle which makes daily life a struggle, to infuriating bureaucratic battles with the council to keep his disabled person's Blue Badge, the devastating effects of a stroke, and the salvation he finds in the three Ss - Swimming, Sex and Sleep. As Alvarez swims in the ponds he considers how it feels when you begin to miss that person you used to be - to miss yourself. Swimming is his own private form of protest against the onslaught of time; proof to others, and himself, that he's not yet beaten. By turns funny, poetic and indignant, Pondlife is a meditation on love, the importance of life's small pleasures and, above all, a lesson in not going gently in to that good night. _____________________ 'A beautiful unfolding of a story, told in deceptively simple prose but with a great power to move' Sunday Times 'The adrenalin still flows in lively extracts' The Times 'A marvellous book... it has no business to be as invigorating and absorbing - its success is against the odds' Observer

Al Alvarez was a poet, novelist, literary critic, anthologist, and author of many highly praised non-fiction books on topics ranging from suicide, divorce and dreams - The Savage God, Life After Marriage, Night - to poker and mountaineering - The Biggest Game in Town and Feeding The Rat. His most recent books are Where Did It All Go Right?, The Writer's Voice and Risky Business. He died in 2019.

The adrenalin still flows in lively extracts from 11 years of journals * The Times * A beautiful unfolding of a story, told in deceptively simple prose but with a great power to move * Sunday Times * A marvellous book. Even the title Pondlife is spot-on: unlaboured, light and right. But it has no business to be as invigorating and absorbing - its success is against the odds * Observer * Al Alvarez is a writer's writer whose brilliant insight has illuminated everything from suicide to his love of poker ... A miniature classic of a man's defiant assertion against ageing * Metro *