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Loading... Jackdaw Cake: An Autobiographyby Norman Lewis
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.  ivanfranko | Sep 9, 2016 |   Lewis's technique as a writer seems to be to focus on the oddnesses in the people around him, much as Evelyn Waugh does, but he has a sympathetic way of bringing these out in the text that leaves his subjects with much more of their self-respect and human dignity intact. There are obvious overlaps with the subject-matter of Waugh, Powell and Greene (they all belonged to roughly the same generation, of course), and sometimes you feel that Lewis, writing in 1985, may have borrowed a bit from his predecessors (the captain and sergeant-major in Lewis's field security unit certainly made me think of Waugh's Hound and Ludovic, for instance). But Lewis has a very engaging quality of his own, and having at last discovered him, I certainly want to read some more of his books. (  ) thorold | Apr 28, 2015 | ) Quickpint | Oct 5, 2014 | Eventually he was able to return to his parent’s London home, to join them in their séances, table-knocking, trances and hosting the mediums of the fashionable afterlife. Small wonder that he soon grasped the opportunity of entering the war, as a Field Intelligence Officer, and to then launch his traveling life that led to his becoming a great author. This volume precedes his wonderful Naples ‘44. (http://www.librarything.com/work/64352) 1  John_Vaughan | Sep 9, 2012 |
Since Jackdaw Cake is subtitled ‘An Autobiography’, between inverted commas, we might think of the book as ‘unreliable memoirs’. The first two parts of the book, about his childhood, are written in a strain of hyperbole, sometimes as pleasingly Welsh as Dylan or Gwyn Thomas. Before we reach the third section, about his pre-war adventures among Arabs, Cubans and Sicilians, we have been astonished by his weird boyhood in Carmarthen and Enfield, where his experiences seem scarcely less bizarre and exotic. We no longer think of him as a superior anthropologist heartlessly inspecting lesser breeds, for he has already played the Martian in Britain: perhaps all children are ‘Martian’. The fourth and final section of the book is mostly about his wartime experiences, as a sergeant in Intelligence. His friends, he tells us, when he announced his intention of becoming a writer, urged him not to bore his readers with war stories. So he wrote 14 other books before the celebrated Naples ’44, and now he ends his memoir with equally interesting war stories, largely about Algeria and Tunis, which are quite relevant to the preceding sections but take a slightly different tone. Is retold in
With his trademark dry, laconic wit, Norman Lewis recounts his youth and development as one of the twentieth century's greatest travel writers. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.29)
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Includes war memories from Phillipeville, Algeria and Tunis. This last section is a study in war's absurdities as seen through the experience of a British intelligence unit. Lewis' sympathies lie with the local inhabitant who is so misunderstood and mistreated by the military imposed upon him/her. He baldly shows how bitter and cruel these relationships can be.