Slipstream: A Memoir

"Elizabeth Jane Howard is one of my all-time favourite authors. Again, I think she was overlooked in her lifetime because she had the misfortune to be married to Kingsley Amis, who was much more famous at the time. She was also Martin Amis’ stepmother and he credits her with his love for literature. Howard is most famous for writing a loosely autobiographical set of novels called The Cazalet Chronicles , about a family during World War II and then post-war Sussex. It’s such a beautiful collection; she handled this wonderful cast of characters with great beauty and aplomb and insight. When I came to write my first novel I actually re-read Elizabeth Jane Howard to see how she did it. And again, a bit like Lehmann, it the space of one paragraph she shifts the perspective from one character to another, and it’s so seamlessly done that as a reader you don’t even notice that it’s happening. Anyway, she’s a wonderful writer. “Success is not a stretch limousine. Success is in knowing yourself, and loving each other, and feeling content with life” Slipstream is her memoir. I read the Cazalet Chronicles and then I read Slipstream, and it was fascinating to me how much she had drawn from her own life. One of the things I hadn’t realised is that there is a storyline in the Cazalets about a father who acts extremely inappropriately towards his daughter. In modern day parlance it would be abuse. But the way Howard handles it is very delicate—she says that the daughter felt that this was an extreme example of physical affection—and that was lifted from Elizabeth Jane Howard’s own life. Her father did it to her and Slipstream recounts that. What that episode left her with was an innate need for the approval of men and a consequent failure to find herself lovable. And she ended up having a string of disastrous affairs with various high profile men include Laurie Lee and Cecil Day-Lewis and then eventually Kingsley Amis. She never fully believed in herself. She was a wonderful homemaker. She would make every home that she lived in beautiful. She would do incredible meals and she was a conscientious stepmother. And I think that was all part of her trying to shore up her lack of self-esteem. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter I think that is a great sadness because she is a brilliant novelist and I’m not sure if she ever realised that about herself. I actually met Elizabeth Jane Howard a couple of times before she died. When I wrote my first novel I sent it to her it and she was kind enough to write me a blurb. Before we met, we had a short exchange of letters and I said to her: ‘it means so much to me coming from you, because I so admire you, and you’ve taught me so much through your books.’ She replied to say, ‘That’s so nice to hear because I feel as if everything I write ends up in a great lake of silence.’ It made me so sad to hear that. It was also meant to be reassuring—as often one feels that way as a novelist. Much later, I interviewed her, and we had lunch after that and I got to know her a bit. She was so wonderful, but still didn’t believe that she was worth much even though at that time she was undergoing a critical re-evaluation and they were dramatising the Cazelet Chronicles for Radio 4 . And I’m glad to say she did get a level of success just before she died. That was very important for her, and Slipstream is a phenomenal work of autobiography because it’s so extraordinarily honest. She is not afraid of painting an unflattering picture of herself, and she has incredible insight into her own behaviour. It’s a wonderful book. You’ll love it. I find it so freeing. I’ve actually found it a source of tremendous solidarity, as so many people have got in touch with me saying that the podcast has made them feel less alone. Or it has gotten through a particularly tricky time in their life. Or it has made them feel understood. That’s such a beautiful thing, because the reason I write—the reason I do anything I do—is to connect. And feeling that connection and understanding that there is a thirst for that level of connection has been a really beautiful discovery. “The reason I write—the reason I do anything I do—is to connect” I’m completely aware of the irony that a project about failure has turned out to be the most successful thing I’ve done so far. But that, in itself, is a kind of neat way of putting across exactly that sentiment: that by learning how to fail I am actually learning how to succeed. Because I’ve been learning to be open and honest, and to share. Because I’ve been learning that in doing so you actually end up connecting, and being more human, and that for me is what success looks like. Success is not a wad of dollar bills. Success is not a stretch limousine. Success is in knowing yourself, and loving each other, and feeling content with life. And having faith during the patches when you’re not feeling content—when you’re going through something rough—that contentment will come again."