The Scent of Dried Roses - Hardcover

LOTT, Tim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670864609 ISBN 13: 9780670864607

Publisher: Viking, 1996

Synopsis

Tim Lott had a bad nervous breakdown after his girlfriend left him and he had resigned from his job as editor of City Limits. He returned to his working class roots to be nursed back to health by his mother. Shortly after he began to get better his mother committed suicide...Time Lott uncovers a family history of depression which is also, in a fascinating way, a history of the changing attitudes to depression and mental illness in Britain.

About this title

About the Author

Tim Lott has founded several successful businesses and worked as a broadcaster, a magazine editor and television producer. He read Politics and History at the London School of Economics and lives in Notting Hill, London. This is his first book.

Review

'The Scent of Dried Roses touches a nerve no other English memoir has found; it does so in a way that seems not only affecting, but somehow important' - Sebastian Faulks 'This is a moving, insightful, important book. It works as a personal story, as an analysis of the unknowable horrors of suicide and as a history of a changing Britain' - William Hague 'In its slow and careful way, it unfolds a certain topography of melancholia, and the map Lott makes of his troubles mixes the intricate streets he has walked in all his life with some pretty intricate places in his own mind and heart. We are left with a resounding lament for small England ... The book's recreation of a suburban world, its flashing-back and forward in real time, its compilation of whispers and roars and half-remembered truths, its reliance on the intimacies of interior monologue, are bound to make some people think of fiction' - Andrew O'Hagan 'Brilliant. I don't remember reading any text which is so personal, so particular and near the bone and yet which is so utterly without self-regard' - Hilary Mantel 'Outstanding ! tracing his parents' marriage, Lott conveys, with a brilliant, almost Orwellian command of social and historical nuance, what England looked and felt like, decade by decade, from 1930 to 1989 ! it is a story told with courage, candour and astonishing command of detail' Blake Morrison

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670864609
• ISBN 13: 9780670864607
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1