My Animal Life

"Maggie Gee's account of her life as a writer cuts to the bone as she relives triumphs, rejections, despair and renewal. It's a wonderful book, for its boldness and vigour, and for its piercing honesty."—Claire Tomalin How do you become a writer, and why? Maggie Gee's journey starts in a small family in post-war Britain, a long way from the literary world. At seventeen, Maggie goes, a lamb to the slaughter, to university. From the 1960s onwards she lives the defining events of her generation: the coming of the Pill and sexual freedom, tremors in the British layer-cake of class and race. In the 1980s, Maggie finally gets published, falls in love, marries, and has a daughter—but for the next three decades and beyond, she survives, and sometimes thrives, by writing. This frank, bold memoir dares to explore the big questions: success and failure, sex, death, and parenthood—our animal life. was chosen as one of Granta's original Best Young British Novelists. She has published many novels to great acclaim, including , shortlisted for the Orange and IMPAC prizes; ; , longlisted for the Orange Prize; and . She was the first female chair of the Royal Society of Literature from 2004–2008 and is now one of its vice presidents.