Lauren Bacall
"
Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are"
I was born in Los Angeles but grew up near San Francisco, in an area that is now known as "Silicon Valley" but which in those days was still quite rural.
John Steinbeck's novel,
Of Mice and Men was set a little south of there, but the description of George and Lennie's dream farm, with fruit trees, alfalfa, hens, a cow and rabbits strikes a chord with me. I can remember many neighbours who lived on such small-holdings.
California remained my home until my twenties, but my father was a scholar who enjoyed travel and took us to live at various times in England, France, Peru and even a ranch in Arizona while he researched or taught. Looking back I can see this was a wonderful opportunity to broaden my horizons but at the time I mainly resented being parted from my friends. Favourite books such as
The Hobbit,
The Lord of the Rings and the stories of
E. Nesbit provided the link with home that I longed for.
When I was seventeen, I went to the University of California at Berkeley. By coincidence, this was when a British novelist named
David Lodge was teaching there. His book,
Changing Places, gives a very funny account of that time and place, though he has changed all the names, presumably to avoid being sued. Also at Berkeley, I discovered the novels of
Jane Austen. Her description of life in English villages gave me some idea of what to expect when I moved to Kent to do an MA. This was on the early fiction of
Charles Dickens, the man who gave us Oliver Twist, Miss Havisham, and of course the whole memorable cast of
Bleak House.
Although I have lived all my adult life in England, first in Kent and now in Hampshire, I still go back to the US several times a year.
Alison Lurie's novel,
Foreign Affairs, perfectly captures the differences between the two cultures.