When I Was Otherwise - by Stephen Benatar (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Two women looking back over fifty years: one full of regret, the other not admitting to mistakes and continuing to be fiercely positive. Which approach, in the end, is likely to prove more satisfying--both for Daisy herself and for those who live around her?

Review Quotes

"Particularly welcome . . . Funny, outrageous and unpatronizing . . . a cunning, convincing novel that, dealing primarily with the past, manages to be more up-to-date in its observations than the majority of contemporary satires." --The Scotsman

"This book is remarkably convincing . . . One's first reaction on finishing the novel is 'Goodness, how sad!' One's second is 'Goodness, how funny!' --Francis King, The Spectator

"Benatar writes with wit and humour about subjects most writers do not tackle--ageing, age, the frequent nastiness of family life." --Doris Lessing

"An intriguing, funny, sometimes exciting and, finally, sad story; the elegant idiosyncrasy of the author's viewpoint, which made Wish Her Safe At Home so enjoyably inventive without discarding a carefully controlled narrative, here creates a moving story from what might at first appear to be the elements of a black farce." --Christopher Hawtree, The Literary Review

"Arnold Bennett, reflecting with satisfaction on the ability of his novel, The Old Wives' Tale, to give an authentic sense of the passage of time, once observed complacently that 'it isn't in many books that you can see people growing old.' Much to its credit, When I Was Otherwise is such a book." --Peter Kemp, The Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

Stephen Benatar was born in 1937 in Baker Street, London--and in the block of flats where H. G. Wells and Arnold Bennett once lived; one of these days there'll have to be a third important plaque beside the other two! Benatar is married, with four children, but now openly gay and living with a male partner.