A review by deborahrosegreen
A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in a Skip by Alexander Masters

mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

4.0

The discovery of the books was emotional, since they could easily have been my journals or the journals of someone I know. Personally I would be very sad to have my ‘life discarded’ after my death. 

As the biographer described the amount of time the diarist must have spent writing, I pitied her, but as the drawings were revealed I thought the diarist might have some kind of mental illness that made me wary of her. That was before it was revealed that she was drawing scenes from a play.

Then with the sudden plot twist that she was alive, I was captivated. I looked forward to hearing what she looked like, about her family and “hear” her voice. The reality was disappointing. Rather than describe her, the biographer lets us read her responses and they don’t sound anything like her diaries or like a normal person at all. If she was very real and imaginable, that would have been fine. If she was over the top and larger-than-life, I would have accepted it. But she was shallow, flat and boring. I would have been content to hear her described from the biographer’s point of view rather than shown to us.

But it's a really beautiful book with wonderfully written extracts of the diary woven in.