Pondlife

From the author of The Savage God, a unique memoir of growing old, and a lesson in not going gently into that good night

The ponds of Hampstead Heath are small oases; fragments of wild nature nestled in the heart of north-west London. For the best part of his life Al Alvarez – poet, critic, novelist, rock-climber and poker player – has swum in them almost daily.

An athlete in his youth, Alvarez chronicles what it is to grow old with humour and fierce honesty – from his relentlessly nagging ankle which makes daily life a struggle, to infuriating bureaucratic battles with the council to keep his disabled person''s Blue Badge, the devastating effects of a stroke, and the salvation he finds in the three Ss – Swimming, Sex and Sleep.

As Alvarez swims in the ponds he considers how it feels when you begin to miss that person you used to be – to miss yourself. Swimming is his own private form of protest against the onslaught of time; proof to others, and himself, that he''s not yet beaten.

By turns funny, poetic and indignant, Pondlife is a meditation on love, the importance of life''s small pleasures and, above all, a lesson in not going gently in to that good night.

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''A beautiful unfolding of a story, told in deceptively simple prose but with a great power to move'' Sunday Times

''The adrenalin still flows in lively extracts'' The Times

''A marvellous book... it has no business to be as invigorating and absorbing – its success is against the odds'' Observer