Speak, Memory - post II

Again there have to be apologies because of the volume of writing and meetings I am committed to at work at the moment the time for reading is really getting squeezed hence the very low number of pages read. Will promise, to myself at least, to improve.

Bullet points between pages 42 – 84

* There is a great deal of family history in Chapter 3 that establishes that he has descendants in the Russian nobility and also in German aristocratic circles

* The story is much more enjoyable when he tells stories about some of his family, particularly his uncles, one of them leaves him his estate, and the relationship between some of those family members and the Russian political scene

* He talks about the time his father has to spend behind bars because of his involvement in calling for further reforms from the Tsar following the peasant uprising in 1905 and he mentions the politics of the landowner and peasants

* There are an odd couple of paragraphs where he says in response to someone that he does not miss the money that the revolution cut him and his family off from but he misses the childhood memories that were cut off after he went into exile

* For those people interested in the art of writing there is a very interesting passage at the start of chapter 5 when he admits that a lot of the foibles and possessions that surrounded his childhood he has given to his characters in his numerous books and there isn’t much left that he hasn’t used in books

Tomorrow would see the recollections cover more of the painful ground of the revolution and the move into exile…