I loved Maeve's voice in this memoir: the aching of a grieving heart is evident throughout, even when speaking with fondness of her life with Mervyn and their children. Despite her obvious bias (I wouldn't have it otherwise, though) Maeve isn't entirely starry-eyed and oblivious to Mervyn's shortcomings, which are by way otherworldliness and impracticality, as on a personal level I've only read of him as being a warm and generous person.

Maeve provides much insight into the life experiences which influenced Mervyn's work, from his childhood in China, his various residences upon the Channel Island of Sark, and his war service, both as a sapper in the army, in which role his talents were wasted and his emotional resources were ravaged, and as a war artist, in which his talents were well used, and his emotional resources were ravaged, again.

The end of Mervyn's life is tragic, as his Parkinson's disease and dementia were brutally treated by electro-convulsive 'therapy', forced admission to a psychiatric ward and radical brain surgery. Maeve finds that she can't really bring herself to describe this part of Mervyn's life, but the last few pages distill the years of grief she felt at losing the great love of her life to the living death of late stage dementia. ( )

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