Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography » (1 BALLANTI)

With morality-conscious mysteries that do not linger on gore, P. D. James is a sort of anti-Lecter. Her tales are told in the whodunit tradition that prizes character, restraint and the slow unraveling of both a mystery and a social niche.

This crafter of taut, resonant dissections of the dark side of the human heart here turns the examining lens on her own story. The fragmentaion noted in the title refers to the device James uses: snatches of memory, flashes of anecdote, glimpses into her own process and predilections are laid out in diary entries over the course of a year. The book includes b&w photos and the text of a paper James gave in 1998 on Jane Austen's as a detective story. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Library Journal

In 1997, on the eve of her 77th birthday, noted mystery novelist James (A Certain Justice) decided to keep a diary for the first time ever, recording one year in her life. The result is this "fragment of autobiography," a mix of memoir, ruminations on everything from her writing career to Princess Diana's death, and literary criticism (James is a passionate admirer of Jane Austen and includes in an appendix a speech she gave to the Jane Austen Society on "Emma Considered as a Detective Story"). While James confesses to loving gossip in other people's diaries, she admits that her own has "little to offer in the way of titillating revelations." Although her discretion about the painful periods in her life (in particular, her husband's mental illness) is admirable in this Age of Indecent Exposure, it also makes for an impersonal and rather dull diary. The reader never gets a sense of the true James and the events that shaped her as a writer and human being. For larger collections.[Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/00.]--Wilda Williams, "Library Journal" Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\