Dear departed

What a very different VMC Dear departed was. Lyrical, and a wonderful evocation of a life growing up in France at the start of the twentieth century. I loved the way the translation made the words and sentences seem slightly unfamiliar, in the way that something that has not been written in original English often comes across. Yourcenar was a prolific writer and essayist, and her experience in writing certainly shone through this book. It's a mixture of memoirs and letters and momentos that give such insight into French history.

It's part of a trilogy - this part deals with her mother's side of the family, the other Virago, How many years, with her father's side, but Virago have not published the third ("A vision of the void"). This volume was published once, with a modern green cover.