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Maybe someday
25
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
35/100Critics
15/100Scholars
Author:
A.N. Wilson
Publisher:
Bloomsbury Continuum
Date:
November 1, 2022
The memoirs of A. N. Wilson, one of Britain's leading contemporary critics, both literary and cultural, and a figure celebrated for his waspish and subversive writing.
What The Reviewers Say
... a mea culpa, a self-appraisal so damning that it becomes almost endearing. Enough contrition, you want to tell him, you’re not so wicked a chap as you make out.
The cover of Confessions shows him in arch-fogey mode at 32, with his natty attire, midwife’s bicycle and meek demeanour — but this memoir, which takes us up to his mid-thirties, wants to demolish such an image. From the start Wilson presents himself as a shameless badass.
Mr. Wilson makes up in wit what he lacks in celebrity antics.
Wilson’s confessions aren’t quite to be understood in the Augustinian sense, though that hovers over the text. They are, though, confessions in another, more positive sense, a commitment to the act of writing and an acknowledgement of the role of memory in that act. Though there are Dickensian cadences throughout the book, it would be unfair to use the adjective of Wilson’s family portraits.
