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maryoliverdisciple's review against another edition
3.0
This book read very strangely. For the first 100 pages I wished that I had read more of Christopher's novels since he was mostly discussing his actual life and friends at the time vs. their fictional manifestations in his novels. Though after a while, it just read like a typical biography. Not an autobiography, mind you. A biography. But having the detached voice, meant he was very honest and clear-eyed, or at least very much seemed so.
Oh! I did very much enjoy recognizing Christopher's friends/acquaintances! Such as Auden (of course) and Forster. And more surpisingly Virginia Woolf and passing mentions of Rosamond Lehmann and Giles Romilly (who I am interested in because of his brother, Esmond.Mitfordite reporting for duty!).
Oh! I did very much enjoy recognizing Christopher's friends/acquaintances! Such as Auden (of course) and Forster. And more surpisingly Virginia Woolf and passing mentions of Rosamond Lehmann and Giles Romilly (who I am interested in because of his brother, Esmond.
bombycillacedrorum's review against another edition
4.0
Kind of love seeing the upper-class 1930s gay circuit/life
jaelynx's review against another edition
5.0
Isherwood’s memoir covering the period around his time in the gay scene of 1930s Berlin as the country was slowly overtaken by Nazis, ending in his leaving Germany and trying to get his boyfriend Heinz immigration to the UK to avoid him being conscripted by the Nazis. Part of it was fictionalised in his Berlin Novels (and adapted into the musical Cabaret).
It's this which really got me into the history of Weimar Berlin and the early gay rights movement there, but also writing that focuses on the calm day to day lives of unimportant but fascinating characters swept up in changes far above them.
javinki_'s review against another edition
4.0
Along with Everything is Illuminated, this is the second book which I've library-copy started and my-own-bought-copy finished. I really love the (sort of) third person narration, the idea of falling for 'ideas' rather than people (when yr romantically / sexually figuring shit out, that is), and slightly in awe of the continent-trotting he gets up to willy nilly. Yes, I said it, WILLY NILLY. Poor Heinz. Shame the book got a bit dull as it went on but hey, that tends to be the case with all memoir / biography. Live fast die young leave a great book, maybe.
joeldrama's review against another edition
4.0
a fascinating insight into Isherwood's life in Berlin and beyond, as well as a compelling read
kasss's review against another edition
4.0
I'm a big fan of Isherwood's work, primarily for the way he writes about his pre-WWII experiences in Germany (and for the way he writes his characters). I'm glad I read some of his work already before starting Christopher and His Kind, because this autobiography sheds so much light on his work, his life, and the work he wrote based on his life.
What fascinates me about this book in particular is that Isherwood writes about his life from an outside perspective, alternating 'Christopher' with only the occasional 'I', as if writing a biography rather than an autobiography. This is actually very much in line with much of the rest of his work, where the narrator is a fictionalised version of himself ('Christopher Isherwood', or 'William Bradshaw', if you will). In Christopher and His Kind he confirms that (and to which degree) the fictionalised Isherwood is an unreliable narrator - and I can't help but wonder if the 'narrator' of Christopher and His Kind isn't at least a little unreliable, too.
Wonderful autobiography - can't wait to read more of his work.
What fascinates me about this book in particular is that Isherwood writes about his life from an outside perspective, alternating 'Christopher' with only the occasional 'I', as if writing a biography rather than an autobiography. This is actually very much in line with much of the rest of his work, where the narrator is a fictionalised version of himself ('Christopher Isherwood', or 'William Bradshaw', if you will). In Christopher and His Kind he confirms that (and to which degree) the fictionalised Isherwood is an unreliable narrator - and I can't help but wonder if the 'narrator' of Christopher and His Kind isn't at least a little unreliable, too.
Wonderful autobiography - can't wait to read more of his work.
worthy's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.75
Christopher and His Kind isn’t the type of book I’d usually pick up, slow, non-fiction with older language and a chunkier text but I genuinely grew to enjoy this one the further and further I got into it. You get a really good sense of Christopher as a person including his problematic attributes and it makes the book feel honest about the kind of person he is whilst informing you of his life. Admittedly the slowness of the book did get to me at times but ultimately what I found in Christopher and His Kind was a reflective and openly told story that still resonates in places and allows for reflection not only on the era of Christopher’s life that it depicts but also where we are now.
brnycx's review against another edition
4.0
"he must never again give way to embarrassment, never deny the rights of his tribe, never apologize for its existence..."
christopher and his kind provides a fascinating depiction of (privileged) gay life in western europe in the tinderbox years before ww2. what struck me thoroughly was how relatively uninhibited isherwood and his close circle of gay friends were. if i do come across gay characters set in this period, i'm used to them being deeply repressed and thoroughly self-hating, often torn between family/duty and love - it was refreshing to read that here it wasn't really the case. while persecuted by society, they still lived and loved relatively openly.
interestingly isherwood uses 'christopher', rather than the first person, for what is essentially an autobiography. in all of the books of his i've read so far, you get a real sense of isherwood having lived each moment through what he could later write about it - placing himself as a character ('christopher') in his own autobiography is an extension of that. it also somewhat mischievously makes the book even harder to categorize, to its merit.
also worthy of mention, and something that (for some reason) i wasn't quite expecting, was the sheer amount of famous people who pop up in. it's almost ridiculous! w.h. auden, e.m. forster, virginia and lenoard woolf, benjamin britten, thomas mann and his family, to name just a few.
to get the most out of this book, i think you have to read isherwood's earlier works - he goes into them in quite some detail, fleshing out the real people behind his eccentric cast of characters, and filling in the (gay) details left unsaid or subverted in his earlier fiction.
part travelogue, part memoir, part fiction, part revisionist history, i don't think i've ever read anything quite like it.
christopher and his kind provides a fascinating depiction of (privileged) gay life in western europe in the tinderbox years before ww2. what struck me thoroughly was how relatively uninhibited isherwood and his close circle of gay friends were. if i do come across gay characters set in this period, i'm used to them being deeply repressed and thoroughly self-hating, often torn between family/duty and love - it was refreshing to read that here it wasn't really the case. while persecuted by society, they still lived and loved relatively openly.
interestingly isherwood uses 'christopher', rather than the first person, for what is essentially an autobiography. in all of the books of his i've read so far, you get a real sense of isherwood having lived each moment through what he could later write about it - placing himself as a character ('christopher') in his own autobiography is an extension of that. it also somewhat mischievously makes the book even harder to categorize, to its merit.
also worthy of mention, and something that (for some reason) i wasn't quite expecting, was the sheer amount of famous people who pop up in. it's almost ridiculous! w.h. auden, e.m. forster, virginia and lenoard woolf, benjamin britten, thomas mann and his family, to name just a few.
to get the most out of this book, i think you have to read isherwood's earlier works - he goes into them in quite some detail, fleshing out the real people behind his eccentric cast of characters, and filling in the (gay) details left unsaid or subverted in his earlier fiction.
part travelogue, part memoir, part fiction, part revisionist history, i don't think i've ever read anything quite like it.