A Spoilt Boy - Reviews - Book Review

Contemporary Review, July, 2003

A Spoilt Boy. Frederic Raphael. Orion. [pounds sterling]14.99. 291 pages. ISBN 0-75285-584-0. The publication of memoirs by highly successful writers in which they tell readers how miserable was their childhood is no new genre. One has only to think of Anthony Trollope, John Stuart Mill, Sir Edmund Gosse and Sir Winston Churchill.

The author of these memoirs, famous as a novelist, reviewer and essayist, is now in his seventies and recalls his earliest memories of a visit to Chicago, then his days at prep school and Charterhouse. Much of the hook is concerned with the author's divided loyalties due to his Jewishness and to his mother's American birth. Sometimes his unending queries regarding whether or not he was accepted because of his 'differences' makes one wonder if he has not thought more about what others thought of him than they actually did. Like most memoirs by writers this is in parts over-written and over-analytical but it does shed some light on life in the 1930s and '40s. The author may be forgive n much because of his denunciation of the pretentious George Bernard Shaw, 'including his vegetarian eyebrows'. (T.E.H.G.)