Book description
Things I Don't Want to Know is a unique response to George Orwell from one of our most vital contemporary writers. Taking Orwell's famous list of motives for writing as the jumping-off point for a sequence of thrilling reflections on the writing life, this is a perfect companion not just…
Why read it?
1 author picked Things I Don't Want to Know as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Deborah Levy weighs in with autobiography, but not the self-important or self-tortured brand, no, Things I Don’t Want to Know reads like a collection of anecdotes you might hear from a close friend over the course of decades that add up to a sense of why they are the way they are.
She shaves it down to essential experiences that may have shaped her (I don’t presume!) and in so doing, reveals the writerly eye she has had since she was a child. I greatly admired the skill with which she recounted childhood episodes from the eyes of the child,…
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