El cisne en el ocaso

Here is Rosamond Lehmann, one of the most distinguished British writers of the 20th century, author of eight acclaimed novels. And here is The Swan at Dusk, her only autobiographical work, dazzling and shocking of hers, in which she elegantly and precisely recreates the world of yesterday. Intense and vivid snapshots of his privileged childhood before World War I: the idyllic games in the garden full of mysteries, the piano lessons, the impressive library, the successive nannies and governesses (some of whom behaved with unusual cruelty) , and the innocent joy and complicity of siblings and pets. Also sketches of the experiences that made her a precocious and successful writer, part of the new batch of young post-war authors, an expert in tearing the veils of reticence and unceremoniously when it came to addressing issues that were then considered "little feminine". With great delicacy and depth, Lehmann also recounts the tragedy that shook her world as her mother. One morning, a small blackbird with a broken neck appears as a harbinger of doom: a few hours after finding it, the author receives a phone call from her son telling her that Sally, her twenty-four-year-old daughter, has died. After this traumatic news, devastated by grief and desperate for answers, Lehmann underwent a series of completely unexpected and overwhelming psychic and mystical experiences, which she scrupulously records and recounts with extreme finesse. The meaning of these events, her messages of hope, and the comfort they brought her close this short and prodigious book, which deals with the search for peace and acceptance, and finding courage and serenity in the face of irreparable loss.