Divided Lives: Dreams of a Mother and a Daughter - Tapa blanda

Lyndall Gordon manages to avoid being undaughterly about her exciting, difficult, self-obsessed mother . . . as racy as a novel (Guardian)

A biographer with soul, she reaches into the hearts of those she brings alive for us. She makes the meaning of their lives sing and sweat as she invites us into their experiences, their longings, their struggles and their disappointments . . . [a] fascinating mix between memoir and biography (Observer)

[A] beautifully written and troubling memoir (Independent on Sunday)

[A] sensitive exploration of the complexities of motherhood and daughterhood (Sunday Times)

This quietly devastating book takes us into many strange terrains but it is to the 'inner life of that room' in Cape Town that Gordon finds herself returning. It was there she fountained into one of our most sensitive writers (Mail on Sunday)

In Divided Lives, [Gordon] devotes to her mother the kind of care and attention she has previously devoted to the Modernists, and - goodness knows! - her mother, Rhoda, certainly deserves it (Literary Review)

Lyndall Gordon's intrepid and astute biographies of writers . . . frequently yield insights that have eluded previous scholars . . . Now Gordon brings her gift for uncovering startling truths to bear on her own upbringing in 1950s and 60s South Africa (Times Literary Supplement)

Memoir of the year? Divided Lives, Lyndall Gordon's enthralling and painful account of her relationship with her mother (Elizabeth Lowry Times Literary Supplement)

A wonderful read that's both frank and delicate (Sunday Herald)