3.64 AVERAGE


Succinct beautiful story telling, little know gem. A unique and iconic childhood well remembered and possibly embroidered child memories. Sheer delight

My great-aunt Juliet was knocked over and killed by a bus when she was eighty-five. The bus was travelling very slowly in the right direction and could hardly have been missed by anyone except Aunt Juliet, who must have been travelling fairly fast in the wrong direction.


So begins Robin Dalton’s Aunts Up the Cross, setting the scene for an often outrageously funny — and always delightful — memoir about her childhood in the 1920s and ’30s. The Cross of the title is Sydney’s Kings Cross, a rather dubious area known as the city’s red-light district, but with a distinct bohemian flavour.

Dalton, who became a leading literary agent in the UK in the 1960s (her clients have included, among others, Iris Murdoch, Edna O’Brien, Margaret Drabble and Tennessee Williams), grew up in an unconventional household: her grandparents on the ground floor, her parents on the top floor, and a succession of eccentric aunts, uncles and house guests filling up the spare rooms.

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A brief nostalgic remembrance  of times past in a bohemian family. Keep in mind it’s twee itty bitty memoir of its time. 
adventurous lighthearted
lighthearted medium-paced

A well-written account of the author’s bohemian childhood with her eccentric family, growing up in Sydney’s Kings Cross in the inter-war period. Interesting reflections abound!

Delightful.
funny lighthearted reflective medium-paced
funny lighthearted relaxing medium-paced
relaxing medium-paced

The amplitude of my emotional response to 'Aunts Up the Cross' was as weird as the book itself: from hysterical laughter to feeling awkward, to put it gently.
Review to come.