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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>Maggie Gee's memoir paints a fine, honest, and complex portrait, chronicling the successes and pitfalls of a writer's life.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p>A wise and beautiful book about what it feels like to be alive--I really loved it.--Zadie Smith</p><p>Maggie Gee's account of her life as a writer cuts to the bone as she relives triumphs, rejections, despair and renewal. It's a wonderful book, for its boldness and vigour, and for its piercing honesty.--Claire Tomalin</p><p>How do you become a writer, and why?</p><p>Maggie Gee's journey starts in a small family in post-war Britain, a long way from the literary world. At seventeen, Maggie goes, a lamb to the slaughter, to university. From the 1960s onwards she lives the defining events of her generation: the coming of the Pill and sexual freedom, tremors in the British layer-cake of class and race. In the 1980s, Maggie finally gets published, falls in love, marries, and has a daughter--but for the next three decades and beyond, she survives, and sometimes thrives, by writing. This frank, bold memoir dares to explore the big questions: success and failure, sex, death, and parenthood--our animal life.</p><p><b>Maggie Gee</b> was chosen as one of Granta's original Best Young British Novelists. She has published many novels to great acclaim, including <i>The White Family</i>, shortlisted for the Orange and IMPAC prizes; <i>My Cleaner</i>; <i>The Flood</i>, longlisted for the Orange Prize; and <i>The Ice People</i>. She was the first female chair of the Royal Society of Literature from 2004-2008 and is now one of its vice presidents.</p><p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br><br>A wise and beautiful book about what it feels like to be alive. --<b>Zadie Smith</b> <p/>A wonderful book, for its boldness and vigour, and for its piercing honesty. --<b>Claire Tomalin</b> <p/>Observant, honest and sensitively-written, it will be required reading for all admirers of Maggie Gee's fiction. --<b>Michael Holroyd</b> <p/>Anyone who yearns for that lost post-war Britain would do well to read this vivid, minutely observed memoir ... Gee has a sensuous eye for detail --<b><i>The Daily Telegraph</i></b> <p/>Sensitive, honest, courageous, stylish --<b><i>The Times</i></b> <p/><i>My Animal Life</i> is a complex and complicated, anxious and affirmative meditation on the different places that writing can take you' --<b>Frances Wilson, <i>The Times Literary Supplement</i></b> <p/>[Maggie Gee] writes with uncompromising honesty about the triumphs and vicissitudes of her personal and literary life and offers balanced and wise insights into family and friendship, motherhood and marriage, class and race. Highly recommended for all aspiring writers. --<b>Bernadine Evaristo</b> <p/>[<i>My Animal Life</i> is] a revelation so profound and pared down that every word strikes like a hammer on an anvil, throwing off sizzling sparks. --<i><b>the f word</i></b> <p/>A beautifully wrought, perceptive and uplifting memoir. --<b><i>The Good Book Guide</i></b><br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br>Maggie Gee was chosen as one of Granta's original 'Best Young British Novelists'. She has published many novels to great acclaim, including The White Family, shortlisted for the Orange and IMPAC prizes, My Cleaner and The Flood, longlisted for the Orange Prize, and The Ice People. She was the first female Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, 2004-2008, and is now one of its Vice-Presidents.

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