Instead of a Letter

I stayed up late and finished this one on the last evening of our vacation. I feel sorry for her. Her rejection of God and her "free" lifestyle really left her a lonely and unhappy person. She couldn't see it, and I left this book feeling very sorry for her. She may have been a famous Brit, but I would not want to be her. 

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

James Mustich

Written in the author’s mid-forties, Instead of a Letter tells a story of childhood in the English countryside, high times at Oxford during the 1930s, bleak times during the war; of adolescent romance imagined into being, carried to the brink of adulthood, then lost with crushing effect. The ensuing sadness shadows Athill’s emerging career at the BBC and in the book world—she was one of the founding members of the distinguished publishing firm André Deutsch—until she learns, through the wisdom of work and words, to conjure something like happiness from the vagaries of love and the verities of time.