Iris and the Friends

Book excerpt: The last month or so of the life of Iris Bayley, the wife of the author, provides the framework for this biography. But within this structure the author enters into extensive memories of the past. The book could almost be called The Use of Memory - in a Proustian sense. It continually harks back to the author's own childhood and to Iris's early years to explain how they came together and how they were 'right' for each other. So in this book the author explains much more about himself and describes in much more details how he managed to cope with the ordeal of seeing his wife become terminally ill and lose her faculties. In this he quotes a considerable amount from literature, which is his own field of study.