If you enjoyed A House Full of Daughters: A Memoir of Seven Generations by Juliet Nicolson, then you might also enjoy these other books and television shows recommended by our discussion group members:
Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson by Nigel Nicolson
Portrait of a Marriage Masterpiece drama with Janet McTeer, David Haig, and Cathryn Harrison
Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf
The Land, The Garden, and the Your Garden books by Vita Sackville-West
Charleston: A Bloomsbury House and Garden by Virginia Nicolson and Quentin Bell
Them: A Memoir of Parents by Francine Du Plessix Gray
The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
Downtown Abbey Masterpiece television series
Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates PBS television series
Thursday, August 17, 2017
Tuesday, August 1, 2017
August Not Fiction Book Discussions
Juliet Nicolson presents what at first appears to be a straightforward chronological history of the women in her family, looking back to her great-great grandmother Pepita and forward to her own granddaughter Imogen. Nicolson, a descendant of an upper-class British family of writers and publishers that included Bloomsbury novelist and poet Vita Sackville-West, notes that "The habit of writing down the story of our lives has long been a tradition in our family. . . . Having reached a middle point in my life when I began to find it as tempting to look backwards as forwards, I, too, wanted to explore those generations that preceded me." What she discovers is that the collective stories in a family may reveal complicated patterns and truths that can offer past generations forgiveness and future generations hope as they learn from the mistakes of their predecessors and find the courage to change.
Nicolson discovers patterns of dependence imposed by history on the lives of women, but also patterns more personal and familial. She documents a history of secrets, jealousy, fear of intimacy, lack of self-worth, addiction, and infidelity and how these behaviors are learned and repeated within the family. She also explores the nature of privilege and is curious "to see how they would respond to the charge of privilege. . . . I wondered if wealth and class always amounted to privilege in a broader sense." Throughout the generations, the solace of home, in the form of two great British houses, Knole and Sissinghurst, remains constant. Nicolson acknowledges the impossible task of the writer of memoir and history, that "In part, this book is an attempt to overcome the fugitive nature of time and, in many cases, the transitory nature of love."
What do you think? Considering how much has already been written about Nicolson's family, why did she want to write her own memoir? What does it add to the history of this family, class, and culture? Which of the women, and especially their mother-daughter relationships, did you find most interesting? And what about the men in these women's lives? What role did they play? To what extent were the unfortunate patterns in these women's lives the result of their time and place in history, and to what extent were they the result of their own personalities and choices? How did their wealth and class affect their lives? What is it like to be a daughter? Is it unique and different from being a son? What do Knole and Sissinghurst represent to the women who loved these great houses? Have you done any genealogical research about your family? If you were going to write a history and memoir about your family, what would you choose for your focus and organization?
We hope you will join the conversation: Tuesday, August 1, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, August 17, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.
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