New & Current Releases
Archives: A-Z By Title
Archives: A-Z By Author
Advanced Search

All-Time High Scores
Best Of 2006
Best Of 2005
Best Of 2004
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Books In Our Forums

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed books.

Quicksands
A Memoir
by Sybille Bedford


10.0

based on 16 reviews
read critic reviews
how did we calculate this?

based on 2 votes
read user comments
rate this book

Compare prices at pricegrabber.com

Buy it at powells.com

Buy it at amazon.com

Buy it at amazon.co.uk

Official Publisher Site

The acclaimed author's first book in a decade--at age 94--finds her recounting the story of the first half of her own life.

Counterpoint Press, 370 pages
05/10/2005
$24.95

ISBN: 1582431698

Nonfiction
Biographies & Memoirs

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

The New York Times Book Review Michael Pye

A calm, exact, lovely book.

Wall Street Journal Roger Lowenstein

[A] dry and yet astonishing memoir.

Washington Post Michael Dirda

Though fragmented in structure and somewhat familiar in its elements... Quicksands is still a deeply ingratiating book, a chance to spend some time with a humane sensibility and to visit a now-vanished world.

The Economist

A NEW book by Sybille Bedford... is an unusual joy.

The Spectator Hilary Mantel

[Bedford's] polished manner is intact, and so too is her pleasure in the world’s surfaces, the sensuous precision that, combined with tough-mindedness and humour, is the foundation of her style.

Daily Telegraph Hilary Spurling

Quicksands confronts dispossession, grief and loss with a rigorous, impersonal, almost surgical precision that is both exhilarating and moving.

Los Angeles Times Brenda Wineapple

One of the finest stylists in the English language. Quicksands is about learning to write in the most concrete, meaningful way. [17 July 2005, pg. R5]

Publishers Weekly

This passionate memoir reflects a sharp, incisive interiority and is written in a style that's even more lyrical and engaging than the style that propelled Bedford into the literary world with her first book, Sudden View, in 1953.

New York Review Of Books Alan Hollinghurst

Good new material.

Booklist Allison Block

Bedford goes a bit overboard on details in this otherwise lively account of a literary life. [1 March 2005, p.1131]

Library Journal Gina Kaiser

[Bedford] moves back and forth in time, accumulating events of the literati she interacts with in Rome, Paris, and London, and in so doing gives a wonderful feel for these locales during the rise of fascism. [1 April 2005, p.93]

The Observer Andrew Barrow

Gloriously uncondescending and pioneeringly ungrammatical.

The Guardian Victoria Glendinning

A creative tussle between memory, imagination and desire.

The Independent Clare Colvin

Remarkably forthcoming.

Kirkus Reviews

It's a shifting, erratic journey through the century.

Daily Telegraph Selina Hastings

Quicksands is a remarkable work, vividly evocative and at the same time teasingly elusive.