Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Anne Fine – Sunday 7 December 1947 – still living as of this post






Introduction

I met (in the casual, one-of-a-crowd way that occurs at book signings) Anne Fine at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2001. She gave a talk before the obligatory signing and this is what I wrote in my journal. “…Anne Fine…talked about each of the adult books she has written (…mainly known as a children’s writer). Anne was funny – she says her books have a dark humour to them…will enjoy reading her…has an open and easy personality.” – personal journal, Monday 20 August 2001. Anne signed my copy of her book, Taking the Devil’s Advice, as follows: “For Adrean, With all good wishes Anne Fine.”

Dedication in Taking the Devil’s Advice

“For Tik Enif


Excerpt from Chapter 1 of Taking the Devil’s Advice

“Look at this. Look! What a cheek. Look what I’ve found hidden away at the back of the bloody airing cupboard.

She has been writing in my autobiography again. She so annoys me. Why must she poke her nose in everything, meddling and prying, forever insisting on her right to be taken into account? Sometime I think my last few waking hours of Perfect Privacy must have passed by, unnoticed and unvalued, the day before I met Constance. How long is it since we parted – three years? Four? Yet here she is, snooping around my room whenever I’m out, leafing through papers on my table, reading the (few) bits that interest her and scribbling her irritating little comments and additions down the margins and over on the back. I can’t put up with this for three more months. I should never have agreed to spend the summer here in the first place. It was a foolish idea, and I’m not sure it’s even very good for the children. I’ll have to move out and find somewhere else. Or buy a large tin box with a good lock.

And yet, let’s face it, I’m not here by accident, am I? I did choose of my own free will not to spurn Constance’s offer of a place to stay, and I can’t argue that I didn’t live with her long enough to know exactly what she’s like. I must have realized Constance could no more stay peacefully and incuriously outside a room in which her former husband is writing anything of a remotely personal nature than she could fly unaided to the moon. I must have known that she’d be in and out all the time, rooting through, checking, complaining, criticizing; that even the most casual attempt to pin down a few simple dates would turn one mealtime after another into great atavistic wrangles about the reasons for this move, that baby, those blinding arguments; that it would be three months of pure hell. It isn’t even as if what Constance remembers is of any relevance. I’m not writing that sort of autobiography, and if I were, this is the last place on earth I’d choose to write it. I’m here because all my philosophical papers are still in the attic. Why else would I suffer the indignity of living and sleeping up in my old study while this great shambling amiable Ally sleeps in my old bed with my old wife?”


Yesterday’s writer – Colette
Tomorrow’s writer - Noël Riley Fitch



Source: Fine, Anne. Taking the Devil’s Advice. Black Swan, 1999. ISBN 0-552-99826-5. Dedication: page 5, Excerpt: pages 11-12

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Taking the Devil’s Advice
Center: Anne Fine from the website annefine.co.uk
Right: Signed title page of my personal copy of Taking the Devil’s Advice

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