Toby Litt, ‘Finding Myself’

In true form, I read rather a lot of books on my holiday (indeed my friend Lisa will tell of when I was ostensibly on a ‘’wild’’ group holiday on a Greek island but behaved more like a skiving librarian; it’s not unusual). So, now I’m back in the land of the Ancients, I have to cast my mind back to various hotel rooms and airport waiting lounges in an attempt to remember what I read. Luckily, I was jotting down some random musings on the trip and there’s a few hints back in the margins…

So, way back in the Oberoi hotel in Calcutta I rather enjoyed Toby Litt’s book, ‘’Finding Myself’. At first glance it manages the dubious distinction of sounding simultaneously pretentious and Chick Lit. If we’re going to get all textual-analysis about it, it’s a first person narrative which is being annotated by a second person and retrospectively edited in the light of further events. Not promising, eh? But contrary to expectations it’s really quite good. A novelist decides to write a book by inviting a group of friends – who she expects to behave badly – to a country house for a month, where she will observe them and then write it all up. The second person annotation (handwriting on top of the typewritten text) is by her editor, who is also one of the people invited to the house and is frequently involved in the story. The editor proves to be one of the most amusing characters, despite only being ‘’present’’ by a few words on each page.. gosh, this is starting to sound like a GCSE essay, apologies. Anyhow, there are plenty of mildly ludicrous twists and modern ‘’Big Brother’’ references, but in the end it’s clever without being annoying. Recommended reading for laying around a pool in Calcutta.