THE WOMAN WITHIN

A psychological autobiography, intensely personal in the intimate story of her search for something on which she could build, personal too in her frank inclusion of the two loves of her life- but not intimately detailed,- this somehow lacks that spark that made Certain Measure sheer delight for the reader. Possibly the two together constitute the rounded woman, for the autobiographical aspects of Certain Measure were implicit in the literary response to the work of others, the forewords to her own writing, and comprised- through indirection -- an autobiography of the mind. This is chronological in following the pattern of her life, from a rather tragic childhood, darkened by her own frailty, her mother's long illness, the strange remoteness of her father, successive tragedies, and the ever-threatening deafness which was to close her in. In advancing years, one learns a good deal- but with an odd remoteness- of her literary world, and the writers both sides of the Atlantic. A not wholly satisfying work.