Many years after the death of her grandmother, Lulah Ellender inherited a curious object - a book of handwritten lists.
On the face of it, Elisabeth's lists seemed rather ordinary - shopping lists, items to be packed for a foreign trip, a tally of the eggs laid by her hens. But from these everyday fragments, Lulah began to weave together the extraordinary life of the grandmother she never knew - a life lived in the most rarefied and glamorous of circles, from Elisabeth's early years as an ambassador's daughter in 1930s China, to her marriage to a British diplomat and postings in Madrid under Franco's regime, post-war Beirut, Rio de Janeiro and Paris. But it was also a life of stark contrasts - between the opulent excess of embassy banquets and the deprivations of wartime rationing in England, between the unfailing charm she displayed in public and the dark depressions that blanketed her in private, between her great appetite for life and her sudden, early death.
Throughout Elisabeth's adult life, the lists were a source of structure and comfort. And now, as Lulah learns that she is losing her own mother, she finds herself turning to her grandmother's life, and to her much-travelled book of lists, in search of meaning and solace.
Elisabeth's Lists is both a vivid memoir and a moving study of the familial threads that binds us, even beyond death.
Many years after the death of her grandmother, Lulah Ellender inherited a curious object - a book of handwritten lists.
On the face of it, Elisabeth's lists seemed rather ordinary - shopping lists, items to be packed for a foreign trip, a tally of the eggs laid by her hens. But from these everyday fragments, Lulah began to weave together the extraordinary life of the grandmother she never knew - a life lived in the most rarefied and glamorous of circles, from Elisabeth's early years as an ambassador's daughter in 1930s China, to her marriage to a British diplomat and postings in Madrid under Franco's regime, post-war Beirut, Rio de Janeiro and Paris. But it was also a life of stark contrasts - between the opulent excess of embassy banquets and the deprivations of wartime rationing in England, between the unfailing charm she displayed in public and the dark depressions that blanketed her in private, between her great appetite for life and her sudden, early death.
Throughout Elisabeth's adult life, the lists were a source of structure and comfort. And now, as Lulah learns that she is losing her own mother, she finds herself turning to her grandmother's life, and to her much-travelled book of lists, in search of meaning and solace.
Elisabeth's Lists is both a vivid memoir and a moving study of the familial threads that binds us, even beyond death.
A vivacious and moving portrait of a lost era and a lost grandmother, pieced together from an inherited book of handwritten lists.
Lulah Ellender's writing has appeared in the Guardian, YOU magazine, EasyLiving and Green Parent, among others. She lives in Lewes, East Sussex, with her husband and four children. This is her first book.
[A] tender memoir... A moving, evocative read. Five stars
*Sunday Express*
Go to your "books to read" list and place Elisabeth's Lists right
at the top. It is charming without ever being whimsical and a vital
voice as Elisabeth asserts her right to be more than simply a
diplomat's daughter or ambassador's wife. A valuable record from a
woman we are only now getting to know
*Damian Barr*
This is a hauntingly beautiful meditation on life and death
*Guardian*
With great compassion and imagination, Elisabeth's grand-daughter
Lulah tenderly brings to life the grandmother she never knew
*The Girl from Station X: My Mother's Unknown Life*
A lovely read
*BBC Radio Scotland*
Varied, revealing, sad and funny. It wears its research lightly but
still manages to inform and delight. I expect [...] readers will
thoroughly enjoy it
*Shiny New Books blog*
Vivid and atmospheric
*Chap*
Extraordinary... A love letter to the grandmother the writer never
knew
*People*
A perceptive and original first book, it is as much a meditation on
the meaning of lists as it is a biography
*LRB*
An intelligent and moving family narrative
*Spectator*
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