LEFTOVER LIFE TO KILL

by Caitlin Thomas ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 10, 1957

Caitlin Thomas was the wife of Dylan Thomas, and as she shreds her widow's weeds in the months which followed his death-there's a heedless, headlong furor which parallels the self-destructive pattern of his life. In her particular, free-associational prose, or as she styles it ""rhapsodical talk""-""abstract ranting"" she looks back on their passionate- and abusive-life together and the grim spectacle of his last years; on the man himself, his hypochondria, his ""bar- leaning"", his puritanical streak (""of which I got the full benefit""), his fated reception in America- and her resentment thereof; and she airs her anguish-""Dylan and dying, Dylan and dying, they don't go together; or is it that they were bound to go together."" But for the most part, her journal leaves Dylan behind- in the cemetery at Laugharne, as she goes on with Colm (the youngest of her three children) to an island, off Italy, where she delights in the purely physical interlude with Joseph, an eighteen year old boy, in the censure of others, in the momentary escape from her grief..... This is an intimate journal, of a woman primitive and possessed, as she indulges her instincts, chastises her actions and exposes herself with a defiant immodesty. It will of course have a definite appeal for all those who worshipped Dylan Thomas; others will find it curiously, vicariously absorbing.

Pub Date: Oct. 10, 1957

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown- A.M.P.

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1957

Categories: NONFICTION