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

2.0

I would count 'Stuart: A Life Backwards' by the same author as one of my favourite books, but unfortunately won't be adding A Life Discarded to that list. I found the concept intriguing but struggled to stick with it while reading - at various times I felt lost, and that the author was referring to points or people in the life of the diarist that I couldn't remember being mentioned before or couldn't work out how they fitted in. Around 4/5s of the way through the book, the author reveals that he hadn't yet read all of the diaries and, more importantly, had never arranged them into chronological order - which explained my confusion! Even a small reference to this near the start of the book would have made my reading experience much more pleasurable, and although I did find the eventual conclusion of the story satisfying, it didn't do enough to make up for my disengagement during the first section.