Sybille Bedford

xiv, 491 pages ; 21 cm

Taken from a review: Here is the accused, Dr. John Adams, being tried for the murder of Mrs. Morell (after rumors connected with other ""mysterious"" deaths) six years previously (there were 16 other, earlier charges). Then come the nurses in attendance on Mrs. Morell, next the doctors in the hands of the prosecution. The defense takes over the cross-examination and, after the closing speeches, the Judge sums up -- to the verdict, known through news current at the time but still with its jolt of excitement. With a sensitivity for the expertness, the procedures, the surrounding, international gallery of reporters, the play of tactics from lure to pounce, the pervasive point of a medical man using his profession and skill to kill a victim -- this is courtroom drama that implants actual testimony, question and answer, to implement an overall finding that ""truth, in a court of law, is circumscribed and its Pursuit an elaborate rounding up and pinning down..."" The author, whose The Sudden View was a surprise Mexican visit and who found an appreciative audience with her novel A Legacy, will here show her readers that her talents are not balked by technicalities and that what she writes about mirrors an inner, analytical responsibility. Epicurean.

Before returning to Europe after World War II, Bedford traveled to Mexico, and this book reports her impressions in vignettes that reflect the beauty of the land, architecture, and people.

Beginning in 1956 with the publication of A Legacy, Sybille Bedford has narrated - in fiction and non-fiction - what has been by turns her sensuous, harrowing, altogether remarkable life. In this magnificent memoir, she moves from Berlin during the Great War to the artists' set on the Cote d'Azur of the 1920s, through lovers, mentors, seducers and friends, and from genteel yet shabby poverty to relative comfort in London's Chelsea. Whether evoking the simple sumptuousness of a home-cooked meal or tracing the heart-rending outline of an intimate betrayal, she offers spellbinding reflections on how history imprints itself on private lives.

A brilliant picture of a rich, aristocratic Italian-American marriage and its consequences, down to the second generation.

Essays written between 1954 and 2001.

Interpretation of the life and works of the 20th-century English novelis, by an intimate friend and fellow novelist.