Jeremy Gavron is the author of six books, including the novels The Book of Israel, winner of the Encore Award, and An Acre of Barren Ground; and A Woman on the Edge of Time, a memoir about his mother’s suicide. He lives in London, and teaches on the MFA at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina.
‘Gavron has written a book as brave and honest as it is
heart-stopping and gripping. With the meticulousness of a detective
and the heart and soul of an abandoned son, he sets out to examine
a family tragedy so raw and agonising that it is rarely talked, let
alone written, about. I felt for him — and every man, woman and
child in this book — whilst at the same time finding myself unable
to put it down. Yes, you sense him stepping, with touching
sensitivity, through some desperately painful (and potentially
dangerous) territory. But if authors can’t write about the
mysteries closest to their hearts, then what point is there,
really, in memoir?’
*Julie Myerson*
‘A Woman on the Edge of Time possesses all the signature verve,
imagination and elegance of Gavron's writing but he brings to this,
the story of his mother's suicide when he was four years old, a
particular burning, restless intelligence. The result is a memoir
of devastating, heartbreaking power: I had to put my life on hold
to finish it.’
*Maggie O'Farrell*
‘I’ve just finished reading Jeremy Gavron’s new book, and I'm quite
overwhelmed by the artistry of this memoir/detective
story/sociological study. It is in essence a reconstruction of his
mother’s life — but it's not only about his mother, and what drove
her to kill herself at twenty-nine. It is about so much more. About
women — vibrant, ambitious, intelligent women, who came of age in
the ’50s in that precarious post-war decade before feminism took
hold. It is a beautifully written and remarkably honest book that
many women will identify with — what it means to try to have it
all, while society does nothing to support you. I found it deeply
moving, insightful, and gripping.’
*Esther Freud*
‘Occasionally one comes across a book that needs to be read as much
as it clearly needed to be written. Jeremy Gavron's impressive,
tough yet affecting investigation into his mother's suicide at the
age of twenty-nine in 1965 is such a story. Hannah Gavron was one
of the brightest and most vivid young women of her generation — I
know because it was my generation too. She killed herself
inexplicably only months before the publication of her study of
young mother's lives in the early 1960s, the very first book of its
kind in this country. She called her book The Captive Wife. Her
son's book, A Woman on the Edge of Time, is both his story — the
story of the aftermath of a suicide — and his mother's story.
Growing up knowing little about her, with no memories of her
himself (he was four years old when she died,) he has pieced
together her life with meticulous attention: digging up documents,
tracking down scores of people who knew her, both bringing her
alive and coming, at the end, to a heartbreaking understanding of
her death. ‘In one sense, what he has uncovered is a tragic
personal story, one woman's story, but it is more than that: Jeremy
Gavron evokes the lives of all women in those pre-feminist years
and so constructs a masterly portrait of an era. This is such a
fine and beautiful book. A testament to a lost mother, and times
past.'
*Carmen Callil*
‘I was mesmerised by Jeremy Gavron’s extraordinary memoir of his
mother … It’s one of those works that cross over into the real life
so justly that all of life is better understood by it.’
*Ali Smith*
‘Beautifully written — wholly unique — A Woman on the Edge of
Time is an elegy/memoir that is also a kind of detective story
— in which the author investigates, with as much dread as
hope, the circumstances leading to the suicide of his charismatic
and accomplished mother many years before. It is difficult not
to rush through Jeremy Gavron’s compelling story.’
*Joyce Carol Oates*
‘Mesmerising … Meticulous, even-handed and quietly revelatory, [A
Woman on the Edge of Time] may be read both as a kind of detective
story, the reader’s stomach fluttering wildly each time he tracks
down another witness, and as a work of social history, a sly
skewering of the limitations, whether spoken or unspoken, which
were then placed on women.’
*The Observer*
‘Jeremy Gavron’s quest [in writing A Woman on the Edge of Time] is
a double quest: to find out what his mother was like in life and to
find out why she killed herself … The tenacity with which he
pursues this goal is extraordinary … The taboo of silence that
shrouded Jeremy’s childhood is broken. Those complicit with it
aren’t arraigned; the tone is patient and compassionate. But Hannah
[Gavron] steps out of the shadow, 50 years on, and “the great
unsaids” are finally spoken.’
*The Guardian*
‘Gavron is a skilled storyteller. “Like an archaeologist conjuring
a jar out of a few shards”, he talks to extended family, colleagues
and friends, piecing together who his mother might have been. The
result is a tremendous personal narrative that is guiltily
compelling … The only clear and tragic conclusion is that any
suicide is a terrifying puzzle, and those that live in its wake are
forever haunted.’
*Sunday Times*
‘I stayed up all night to finish A Woman on the Edge of Time, this
doggedly reported, elegantly written tale of Jeremy Gavron’s search
to uncover the reason for the suicide of his clever, beautiful,
academic mother … It’s deeply personal, but without
self-indulgence.’
*The Times*
‘An investigative journey into the identity of a young woman who
wanted more from life than her era allowed her, and for the reader
an introduction to a person who, by the memoir’s close, feels like
a friend.’
*Mariella Frostrup*
‘[Hannah Gavron] was ahead of her time. She was before Betty
Friedman and long before Germaine Greer and all those others ... It
was a painful and lonely business trying to work out how to even
talk about the problems of men and women back in the 50s and
60s.’
*Kate Grenville*
‘This tender and forgiving book is a fitting memorial to Hannah’s
wayward brilliance.’
*Daily Mail*
‘With energy and skill [Jeremy Gavron] has pursued old school and
college friends, aged relatives, psychiatrists, neighbours long out
of touch, and Hannah’s teaching colleagues from the Hornsey College
of Art … He has ranged through letters, newspaper archives and the
internet … [His] attempt to understand, and thus forgive the mother
who abandoned him, is admirable … But ultimately, Hannah’s ending
remains rationally inexplicable.’
*FT*
‘A moving enquiry, a compelling search for a lost mother, and a
revealing account of what life was like for adventurous and
intelligent women in the 1960s.’
*Stylist*
‘Gavron is too subtle and intelligent to make the mistake of
believing that suicide is ever about only one thing. And here, in
beautiful, mesmeric prose, he delves deep into the shadow side of
his mother’s life … The result is a memoir that is surely going to
be regarded as a classic of the genre.’
*The Independent*
‘In A Woman on the Edge of Time, Gavron sets out to give form to
the mist of a lifetime’s emotions and barely understood certainties
… A brave reckoning with family secrets.’
*Jewish Chronicle*
‘Profoundly moving …Painstakingly, Jeremy has pieced together
scraps of interviews, letters and photos to form a coherent picture
… This remarkable book will appeal to anybody interested in
mid-20th-century feminism. It’s also a fascinating document about
the devastating legacy of suicide … I cannot recommend it highly
enough.’
*Literary Review*
‘[A Woman on the Edge of Time] has the heartstopping thrill of a
page-turning detective novel; it’s rich with thought-provoking
observations about families, particularly mothers, negotiating the
narrow straits of the late ’50s/early ’60s; and it is underpinned
with profound, though never sentimental, personal emotional tumult.
Intelligent, skilful, and terrifically moving, it remains in the
heart long after it goes back on the shelf.’
*The Big Issue*
‘A haunting book … A family’s guilts and jealousies are a Pandora’s
box. Jeremy Gavron, a first-rate writer and novelist, unfolds the
story at the same fragmented, hesitant pace at which he made his
discoveries, and it is a gripping formula.’
*The Oldie*
‘Hannah's humanity sings from the pages, and it’s a feat of both
skill and compassion that Gavron is able to make me feel like I
intimately knew someone he never had the chance to know properly
himself.’
*Huffington Post*
‘[A] pioneering, intense and visceral work … both an act of
mourning and a revelation of life. The genius of A Woman on the
Edge of Time is that the impossible, very real Hannah Gavron —
cheeky, warm, clever, determined, brilliant, shining, paradoxical —
comes so fully back to life.’
*TLS*
‘A brave and honest memoir that pieces together the story of a
mother lost to suicide, told in beautiful prose by her son.’
*Good Reading*
‘Moving and clear-eyed’
*Woman and Home*
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