Salley Vickers
Author of Miss Garnet's Angel
About the Author
Works by Salley Vickers
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1948
- Gender
- female
- Education
- University of Cambridge
- Occupations
- professor
psychoanalyst
novelist - Organizations
- Saint Deiniol's Library, Hawarden
- Agent
- Gillon Aitken (Aitken Alexander Associates Ltd.)
- Relationships
- Delaney, Frank (husband|divorced)
Kingfisher, Rupert (son) - Short biography
- Salley Vickers grew up as the child of parents in the British Communist Party. Her father was a trade union leader and her mother a social worker. She won a state scholarship to St Paul’s Girl’s School and went on to read English at Newnham College Cambridge. She has worked as a cleaner, a dancer, an artist’s model, a teacher of children with special needs, a university teacher of literature and a psychoanalyst. She now writes full time and lectures widely on many subjects, particularly the connections between, art, literature, psychology and religion. Her principal interests are opera, bird watching, dancing and poetry, to which her father introduced her at an early age. One of his favourite poets, W.B.Yeats was responsible for her name Salley, (the Irish for 'willow') which comes from Yeats’s poem set to music by Benjamin Britten 'Down by the salley gardens'. She has two adult sons, and two grandchildren. She is a member of PEN and the RSPB.
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Liverpool, Merseyside, England, UK
- Places of residence
- Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England, UK
London, England, UK - Associated Place (for map)
- England, UK
Members
Reviews
"Grandmothers" is one of those books that makes me want to shout, "THIS! THIS is what makes reading such a gift." Salley Vickers' writing lit up my imagination, making me feel insightful and connected and sad and refreshed and better equipped to deal with my life as I flew on the borrowed wings of her words.
The book shares moments from the lightly interconnected lives of three grandmothers, initially strangers to each other, as they spend time with their grandchildren and with each other.
show more
Salley Vickers showed a remarkable ability to take me inside the heads of thoroughly imagined women, with very different backgrounds and current circumstances, and keep me interested in each of them. There's none of that "Oh dear, do we HAVE to go back to THIS character now?" that I sometimes get when one character is less interesting than the others.
For once, the publisher's summary describes these three women well:
"fiercely independent Nan, who leads a secret life as an award-winning poet when she is not teaching her grandson Billy how to lie; glamorous Blanche, deprived of the company of her beloved granddaughter Kitty by her hostile daughter-in-law, who finds solace in rebelliously taking to drink and shoplifting; and shy, bookish Minna who in the safety of shepherd's hut shares with her surrogate granddaughter Rose her passion for reading."
There are some big themes here about being a mother and a grandmother, about being old, about being alone and about being aware on a daily basis of one's mortality but the power of the book is that it doesn't start there. It starts with the people. You feel as though the issues arise only because of who the people are rather than that the people have been created to illuminate the issues.
I felt most at home with Nan. I admired the way she confronted the world rather than hiding from it. I was pleased by the realistic way in which Nan's introversion and natural inclination for solitude were described as a facet of her personality and not as an issue to be managed. The quietly comfortable image of Nan's made-to-measure wicker coffin, standing in her living room, doing service as a bookshelf until she needs to use it, captured a lot of how I feel about death.
This is a book full of strong emotions and scenes that feel as strong as my own memories. It's also a book that gave me two new (to me) tools for understanding what is going on around me.
The first is the metaphor of "The Leper's Squint" as a means of grappling with the diversity of way in which we experience life. I've put a slightly longer than usual quotation in here because I think it demonstrates the style of the book as well as articulating the concept. Nan and her grandson, Billy, have been at the seaside. While Billy was digging in the sand, Nan used a phrase from my childhood, "If you keep digging like that, you'll reach Australia." Billy, who is clever and curious but has a tendency to be literal, finds this statement to be absurd. Nan comes back to it when the two of them are having fish and chips a little later.
One of the truths Nan had divined early is that it is the hardest thing in the world to grasp that other people see life from a perspective often quite unlike one's own. "The trouble is, we all see through our own Leper's Squint", she had once said to her husband, who had confirmed the point by asking what on earth she was on about. She tried out the same idea on their grandson.
"What's a Leper's Squint?" he asked, as she had hoped he might.
"You know about leprosy?"
"When bits of you drops off?"
"Well not as bad a that but horribly certainly. In the days when leprosy was common and people were afraid it was catching, there were tiny windows made in churches so the lepers could see into the church while the Mass was being said. Mass is a name for a church service." she added hastily.
"Why did they want to?"
"Why did the lepers want to see into the church?"
"Yes. What did they want to do that for?"
"In those days, most people believed in God."
Billy dipped a chip into some tomato ketchup while he pondered this.
"Why?" he asked again.
"That's what I was trying to explain. It was normal then to believe in God and not being allowed to mingle with the other people in the church, they saw as a terrible consequence of the illness. Nowadays, it's more normal not to believe. They, the lepers and the other folk would have found it weird, as you would say, not to believe in God, while I think you find it weird that they did."
Though of this, she wasn't sure. Billy sometimes interrogated her views on religious questions and she welcomed that. She was open to doubt herself. She continued on more substantial ground.
"You see, pet, in your way of thinking, it's ridiculous to suppose that by digging a hole you could reach Australia, but in my world, I like to imagine that I could."
"Even if you knew that you really couldn't?"
"Yes," Nan said.
Aside from loving him, this was what she liked best about her grandson. He was willing to explore things.
"Even though, with another part of my mind, I knew quite well that I couldn't".
I will tuck this metaphor away and challenge myself to look through other people's Leper's Squints from time to time and to be aware of the limited view from my own.
The second new-to-me concept, also introduced by Nan, was interanimation. I had to look it up. Now I have a word for it, I'm seeing it everywhere and I realise that it's one of the few things that gets stronger as I get older. Here's how the concept is explained. Nan wakes in the night in a holiday cottage and looks out the window:
Moonlight was silver-plating the grass. A full moon, vast and auspicious-seeming, was hanging like a child's lost balloon in a darkly violet sky. She'd stolen that image from someone. Who the hell was it?
That was one of the snags of age. that who you were and what you'd been and what you'd done, read or been told had become so interanimate that there was no telling any more what was what.
Interanimate. There, a case in point. But what does it matter, Nan thought, as she trod wearily of hidden perils, malicious stair-rods for example, down dusty stairs to a kitchen with a And who would care anyway?"
"Grandmothers" is a beautiful example of perfectly executed, authentic, insightful and compassionate interanimation.
My enjoyment of the book was greatly increased by Barbara Flynn's narration. If you have the opportunity, I strongly recommend listening to the audiobook version of "Grandmothers". show less
The book shares moments from the lightly interconnected lives of three grandmothers, initially strangers to each other, as they spend time with their grandchildren and with each other.
show more
Salley Vickers showed a remarkable ability to take me inside the heads of thoroughly imagined women, with very different backgrounds and current circumstances, and keep me interested in each of them. There's none of that "Oh dear, do we HAVE to go back to THIS character now?" that I sometimes get when one character is less interesting than the others.
For once, the publisher's summary describes these three women well:
"fiercely independent Nan, who leads a secret life as an award-winning poet when she is not teaching her grandson Billy how to lie; glamorous Blanche, deprived of the company of her beloved granddaughter Kitty by her hostile daughter-in-law, who finds solace in rebelliously taking to drink and shoplifting; and shy, bookish Minna who in the safety of shepherd's hut shares with her surrogate granddaughter Rose her passion for reading."
There are some big themes here about being a mother and a grandmother, about being old, about being alone and about being aware on a daily basis of one's mortality but the power of the book is that it doesn't start there. It starts with the people. You feel as though the issues arise only because of who the people are rather than that the people have been created to illuminate the issues.
I felt most at home with Nan. I admired the way she confronted the world rather than hiding from it. I was pleased by the realistic way in which Nan's introversion and natural inclination for solitude were described as a facet of her personality and not as an issue to be managed. The quietly comfortable image of Nan's made-to-measure wicker coffin, standing in her living room, doing service as a bookshelf until she needs to use it, captured a lot of how I feel about death.
This is a book full of strong emotions and scenes that feel as strong as my own memories. It's also a book that gave me two new (to me) tools for understanding what is going on around me.
The first is the metaphor of "The Leper's Squint" as a means of grappling with the diversity of way in which we experience life. I've put a slightly longer than usual quotation in here because I think it demonstrates the style of the book as well as articulating the concept. Nan and her grandson, Billy, have been at the seaside. While Billy was digging in the sand, Nan used a phrase from my childhood, "If you keep digging like that, you'll reach Australia." Billy, who is clever and curious but has a tendency to be literal, finds this statement to be absurd. Nan comes back to it when the two of them are having fish and chips a little later.
One of the truths Nan had divined early is that it is the hardest thing in the world to grasp that other people see life from a perspective often quite unlike one's own. "The trouble is, we all see through our own Leper's Squint", she had once said to her husband, who had confirmed the point by asking what on earth she was on about. She tried out the same idea on their grandson.
"What's a Leper's Squint?" he asked, as she had hoped he might.
"You know about leprosy?"
"When bits of you drops off?"
"Well not as bad a that but horribly certainly. In the days when leprosy was common and people were afraid it was catching, there were tiny windows made in churches so the lepers could see into the church while the Mass was being said. Mass is a name for a church service." she added hastily.
"Why did they want to?"
"Why did the lepers want to see into the church?"
"Yes. What did they want to do that for?"
"In those days, most people believed in God."
Billy dipped a chip into some tomato ketchup while he pondered this.
"Why?" he asked again.
"That's what I was trying to explain. It was normal then to believe in God and not being allowed to mingle with the other people in the church, they saw as a terrible consequence of the illness. Nowadays, it's more normal not to believe. They, the lepers and the other folk would have found it weird, as you would say, not to believe in God, while I think you find it weird that they did."
Though of this, she wasn't sure. Billy sometimes interrogated her views on religious questions and she welcomed that. She was open to doubt herself. She continued on more substantial ground.
"You see, pet, in your way of thinking, it's ridiculous to suppose that by digging a hole you could reach Australia, but in my world, I like to imagine that I could."
"Even if you knew that you really couldn't?"
"Yes," Nan said.
Aside from loving him, this was what she liked best about her grandson. He was willing to explore things.
"Even though, with another part of my mind, I knew quite well that I couldn't".
I will tuck this metaphor away and challenge myself to look through other people's Leper's Squints from time to time and to be aware of the limited view from my own.
The second new-to-me concept, also introduced by Nan, was interanimation. I had to look it up. Now I have a word for it, I'm seeing it everywhere and I realise that it's one of the few things that gets stronger as I get older. Here's how the concept is explained. Nan wakes in the night in a holiday cottage and looks out the window:
Moonlight was silver-plating the grass. A full moon, vast and auspicious-seeming, was hanging like a child's lost balloon in a darkly violet sky. She'd stolen that image from someone. Who the hell was it?
That was one of the snags of age. that who you were and what you'd been and what you'd done, read or been told had become so interanimate that there was no telling any more what was what.
Interanimate. There, a case in point. But what does it matter, Nan thought, as she trod wearily of hidden perils, malicious stair-rods for example, down dusty stairs to a kitchen with a And who would care anyway?"
"Grandmothers" is a beautiful example of perfectly executed, authentic, insightful and compassionate interanimation.
My enjoyment of the book was greatly increased by Barbara Flynn's narration. If you have the opportunity, I strongly recommend listening to the audiobook version of "Grandmothers". show less
Some novels are less than what they appear, others are more so. Some can be read as entertainment only, while some can be read that way but have other things to say. Salley Vickers writes novels that are unassuming yet have wise observations about people and how they like to judge others. The Cleaner of Chartres is such a novel.
Agnes Morel is one of those quiet women who appear as if they are going through life trying to be undetected. She arrived one day in Chartres, no one remembers show more exactly when, and has made a meager living for herself cleaning and occasionally watching children.
One priest tries to turn Agnes into his confessor, not of crimes, but of his crisis of faith. Two catty old women who employ Agnes use her in their game of oneupsmanship. A lonely professor turns his life around when Agnes begins to organize his messy office. A psychiatrist worries whether he helped Agnes or made her life worse. And a man involved in a cleaning project within the cathedral finds her fascinating.
Perhaps because she is quiet and makes no demands of her own, others either want her to listen to them or assign all sorts of activities to her. She is often regarded by others are a character not unlike that of Chauncey Gardner in Being There, in which others mistake simplicity for being profound. But in the case of this novel, there is no satire involved.
There is, however, past tragedy and that is used against Agnes when it becomes known. And that's when the narrative becomes really rather interesting. Vickers is good at pointing out what the foibles of each character mean in terms of what kind a character each is. She also is good at slipping in some asides that showcase what's behind what some people do and what's behind their thinking.
In this exchange. Abbe Paul is speaking first while Agnes responds:
"...But since no one knows what it quite was there's no reason why you wouldn't be the one to uncover the mystery."
"Maybe it is better left uncovered."
The Abbe Paul looked at Agnes rather as Alain had, with respect. "How sensible. People are desperate to probe mysteries which for the most part are best left unprobed. It is the modern curse: this demented drive to explain every blessed thing. Not everything can be explained. Nor should be, I think."
"Some things should be, though." She was thinking of the riddle of her own birth.
"To be sure. I often wonder if happiness isn't knowing what should and what should not be explained."
"But how can we tell which is which?"
"Hmmm," said the Abbe Paul. "That, I suppose, is wisdom."
This exchange encapsulates what I like about Vickers's writing -- my initial reaction is to question what's wrong with trying to explain every blessed, and cursed, thing. At first, Vickers's plot seems to suggest that this dashing about trying to explain things, especially when not equipped with all the necessary information, can lead to trouble and hurt people.
But then something else happens, just when it looks like the entire plot is going to collapse upon itself as the smaller-minded characters ascend. As more characters find out what actually happened in the past and what recently happened, things don't just straighten themselves out. Situations actually improve for several characters.
The results are plausible but, depending on one's outlook about other human beings, either likely or barely possible. How one responds to fiction is largely a matter of what one brings to it, and responses could be viewed as a Rorschach Test of sorts. Reading a novel by Vickers, who is a Jungian psychotherapist, it's possible to take a step back from reading and reacting to see what one's own reaction might mean.
Or whether it's just an entertainment. show less
Agnes Morel is one of those quiet women who appear as if they are going through life trying to be undetected. She arrived one day in Chartres, no one remembers show more exactly when, and has made a meager living for herself cleaning and occasionally watching children.
One priest tries to turn Agnes into his confessor, not of crimes, but of his crisis of faith. Two catty old women who employ Agnes use her in their game of oneupsmanship. A lonely professor turns his life around when Agnes begins to organize his messy office. A psychiatrist worries whether he helped Agnes or made her life worse. And a man involved in a cleaning project within the cathedral finds her fascinating.
Perhaps because she is quiet and makes no demands of her own, others either want her to listen to them or assign all sorts of activities to her. She is often regarded by others are a character not unlike that of Chauncey Gardner in Being There, in which others mistake simplicity for being profound. But in the case of this novel, there is no satire involved.
There is, however, past tragedy and that is used against Agnes when it becomes known. And that's when the narrative becomes really rather interesting. Vickers is good at pointing out what the foibles of each character mean in terms of what kind a character each is. She also is good at slipping in some asides that showcase what's behind what some people do and what's behind their thinking.
In this exchange. Abbe Paul is speaking first while Agnes responds:
"...But since no one knows what it quite was there's no reason why you wouldn't be the one to uncover the mystery."
"Maybe it is better left uncovered."
The Abbe Paul looked at Agnes rather as Alain had, with respect. "How sensible. People are desperate to probe mysteries which for the most part are best left unprobed. It is the modern curse: this demented drive to explain every blessed thing. Not everything can be explained. Nor should be, I think."
"Some things should be, though." She was thinking of the riddle of her own birth.
"To be sure. I often wonder if happiness isn't knowing what should and what should not be explained."
"But how can we tell which is which?"
"Hmmm," said the Abbe Paul. "That, I suppose, is wisdom."
This exchange encapsulates what I like about Vickers's writing -- my initial reaction is to question what's wrong with trying to explain every blessed, and cursed, thing. At first, Vickers's plot seems to suggest that this dashing about trying to explain things, especially when not equipped with all the necessary information, can lead to trouble and hurt people.
But then something else happens, just when it looks like the entire plot is going to collapse upon itself as the smaller-minded characters ascend. As more characters find out what actually happened in the past and what recently happened, things don't just straighten themselves out. Situations actually improve for several characters.
The results are plausible but, depending on one's outlook about other human beings, either likely or barely possible. How one responds to fiction is largely a matter of what one brings to it, and responses could be viewed as a Rorschach Test of sorts. Reading a novel by Vickers, who is a Jungian psychotherapist, it's possible to take a step back from reading and reacting to see what one's own reaction might mean.
Or whether it's just an entertainment. show less
I fell in love with Salley Vickers when I read "Miss Garnet's Angel" ten or so years ago. It's set in Venice, a city I simply adore. It's a beautifully imagined moment in a solitary person's life, one where limitless possibilities open up inside her.
Then came "Instances of the Number 3", a very very odd book that captivated me despite my discomfort with the subject of a widow's growing fascination with her husband's transsexual mistress. These are books of courage and beauty.
Now this. I show more wasn't at all sure why, but I was drawn to Mr. Golightly as an exemplar of the kind of quiet, reserved, polite man of late middle age that I am. (Stop laughing.) Normally I give fiction about such men a wide berth because their lives are presented as so arid and meaningless...yet this is Salley Vickers, after all, and one can trust her to find an angle not instantly obvious, can't one?
Uhhh...I guess so...after all, Golightly's loss of his son is presented as the central event in his life, one that caused his entire world to rearrange and reorient itself. I know from losing my own son that this is the way many, if not most, of us respond to loss and grief for our dead children. But the writer in me was itchy. What was Vickers playing at? Where was the element of unexpectedness that her previous books delivered?
I'm glad I was patient. She delivered. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but it wasn't anything other than solidly conceived and executed fiction plotting. So much tidier than life.
I quibble with some of the authorial choices made, I sigh frustratedly over some infelicities of editing ("hoard" when "horde" is meant, oof), and I don't at all know what I really think about her central premise as tied together at the end...I think Golightly gets off rather too easily, but then again I'm a mean old cuss...but it's Salley Vickers, so you can take it from me that it's very much worth a read and will reward you for spending your time with its gentle, flawed, angry, hurt, practical, loving characters. It's like making a village-ful of friends in a few hours, and getting to leave before they get tedious.
Say...I think I just explained British cozy fiction! show less
Then came "Instances of the Number 3", a very very odd book that captivated me despite my discomfort with the subject of a widow's growing fascination with her husband's transsexual mistress. These are books of courage and beauty.
Now this. I show more wasn't at all sure why, but I was drawn to Mr. Golightly as an exemplar of the kind of quiet, reserved, polite man of late middle age that I am. (Stop laughing.) Normally I give fiction about such men a wide berth because their lives are presented as so arid and meaningless...yet this is Salley Vickers, after all, and one can trust her to find an angle not instantly obvious, can't one?
Uhhh...I guess so...after all, Golightly's loss of his son is presented as the central event in his life, one that caused his entire world to rearrange and reorient itself. I know from losing my own son that this is the way many, if not most, of us respond to loss and grief for our dead children. But the writer in me was itchy. What was Vickers playing at? Where was the element of unexpectedness that her previous books delivered?
I'm glad I was patient. She delivered. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but it wasn't anything other than solidly conceived and executed fiction plotting. So much tidier than life.
I quibble with some of the authorial choices made, I sigh frustratedly over some infelicities of editing ("hoard" when "horde" is meant, oof), and I don't at all know what I really think about her central premise as tied together at the end...I think Golightly gets off rather too easily, but then again I'm a mean old cuss...but it's Salley Vickers, so you can take it from me that it's very much worth a read and will reward you for spending your time with its gentle, flawed, angry, hurt, practical, loving characters. It's like making a village-ful of friends in a few hours, and getting to leave before they get tedious.
Say...I think I just explained British cozy fiction! show less
[This is a review I wrote in 2008]
**Art, Venice and mid-life self-discovery - a refreshingly different novel.**
`Death is outside life but it alters it: it leaves a hole in the fabric of things which those who are left behind try to repair.' Thus opens the novel.
Julia Garnet and her long-standing companion and flatmate Harriet decide to retire from work together, on the same day, but when two days later Harriet unexpectedly dies, Miss Garnet decides it is time to take a trip abroad and show more settles upon six months in Venice. Cautious, dignified and unadventurous by nature, Julia is also a virgin and inexperienced in matters of the heart. Venice is quite a revelation.
Julia discovers feelings of passion for the first time when she comes across the Guardi panels in the Chiesa dell'Angelo Raffaele (Church of Angelo Raffaele), which depict the Apocryphal story of Tobias and the Angel. As she views the paintings ...'Something rusty and hard shifted deep inside Julia Garnet', and she goes on to make further emotional discoveries through her friendships and discoveries in the city of Venice. Julia discovers that for the first time in her life she is able to befriend others, and counts among her friends a couple she accused of queue jumping the taxi rank on her first day, a young boy, Nicco, the unsuitable and overly-attentive Carlo, a couple of young English church restorers, and a charming priest.
The ancient Jewish story of Tobias and the Angel is deftly interwoven amongst Julia's story of re-awakening and discovery. Tobias undertakes his journey of ancient times as Julia travels in the present day, and there are subtle threads between them.
Quite a surprise and not at all what I was expecting, `Miss Garnet's Angel' is a breath of fresh air to read. The unsophisticated anti-heroine, Julia, is so down-to-earth, so dignified, and for her years so naive, that she is quite plausible, believable and ultimately delightful, as she discovers each new experience and her confidence grows. A thoroughly enjoyable novel of travel and discovery and one I have no hesitation in recommending to anyone. show less
**Art, Venice and mid-life self-discovery - a refreshingly different novel.**
`Death is outside life but it alters it: it leaves a hole in the fabric of things which those who are left behind try to repair.' Thus opens the novel.
Julia Garnet and her long-standing companion and flatmate Harriet decide to retire from work together, on the same day, but when two days later Harriet unexpectedly dies, Miss Garnet decides it is time to take a trip abroad and show more settles upon six months in Venice. Cautious, dignified and unadventurous by nature, Julia is also a virgin and inexperienced in matters of the heart. Venice is quite a revelation.
Julia discovers feelings of passion for the first time when she comes across the Guardi panels in the Chiesa dell'Angelo Raffaele (Church of Angelo Raffaele), which depict the Apocryphal story of Tobias and the Angel. As she views the paintings ...'Something rusty and hard shifted deep inside Julia Garnet', and she goes on to make further emotional discoveries through her friendships and discoveries in the city of Venice. Julia discovers that for the first time in her life she is able to befriend others, and counts among her friends a couple she accused of queue jumping the taxi rank on her first day, a young boy, Nicco, the unsuitable and overly-attentive Carlo, a couple of young English church restorers, and a charming priest.
The ancient Jewish story of Tobias and the Angel is deftly interwoven amongst Julia's story of re-awakening and discovery. Tobias undertakes his journey of ancient times as Julia travels in the present day, and there are subtle threads between them.
Quite a surprise and not at all what I was expecting, `Miss Garnet's Angel' is a breath of fresh air to read. The unsophisticated anti-heroine, Julia, is so down-to-earth, so dignified, and for her years so naive, that she is quite plausible, believable and ultimately delightful, as she discovers each new experience and her confidence grows. A thoroughly enjoyable novel of travel and discovery and one I have no hesitation in recommending to anyone. show less
Lists
A Novel Cure (1)
Unmarried women (1)
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 20
- Also by
- 8
- Members
- 4,273
- Popularity
- #5,881
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 159
- ISBNs
- 185
- Languages
- 10
- Favorited
- 18