Quicksands

I bought Quicksands in the first flush of my Sybille Bedford infatuation, after devouring Jigsaw, her semi-autobiographical novel about her childhood and youth mostly in the south of France. Well, Quicksands is described as 'A Memoir' and it covers a lot of the same material, except this time (written twenty years later) using real names. It's interesting that she describes her writing method as pretty much just typing whatever's in her head (her eyesight is very poor) without planning or revision, because it certainly does read that way, as if she's sitting in the room with you talking, remembering, digressing, going off on tangents, sometimes repeating herself.

Jigsaw stops in about 1930 and Quicksands does cover some of her life after that date -- living in a weird shed-like apartment on top of a commercial building in Rome, various literary anecdotes (many of them about people I don't know) -- and of particular interest is the story of her marriage of convenience, which secured her British citizenship just before the outbreak of World War II. As a German-born half-Jew living precariously in France, her position was very vulnerable, until Maria Huxley (Aldous's wife) had the brainwave of marrying her to 'one of our bugger friends.' However, the whole plan almost fell apart when the registrar suspected it was a sham relationship, and a lot of frantic scurrying about was required before they managed to pull it off.

For me, Quicksands was worth reading for that section alone but it was probably a mistake to read it so hot on the heels of Jigsaw. If I had to choose between the two, I would choose Jigsaw, which has the structure and rhythms of a novel. It was interesting to contrast the two versions, though, and see where she trimmed and bent the facts to suit her form. She really had a most fascinating life and I'd love to have more of the gaps filled in (who was 'my painter friend?') but I guess I'll never know.