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Halfway to Venus

At her most disarming

Sarah Anderson
Umbrella Books, 13a Blenheim Crescent, London W11 2EE, £12.99, pp. 264, ISBN 9780954262426✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655, 264pp, £12.99,

Byron Rogers

Wednesday, 7th May 2008

Byron Rogers reviews Sarah Anderson's memoirs

The only thing is, her book is two books, two thirds of it her own experience, one third quotations from others on their experiences and on the emotional significance of what was done to her. I should have preferred it had she left Horatio Nelson and the others in the research library, so it would have been all Anderson, as she managed to swim, dive, ski (in the course of which she broke her leg very badly), ride bicycles, found and run the bookshop which later figured in the film Notting Hill, oh yes, and go out with the most appalling men.

The oddity is that one of these at least, for most of the time they were together, completely forgot that she only had one arm. She said this was because he was an egomaniac, but it wasn’t so. It was because of the kind of person she is, or became.

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