Amazon.com The distinguished biographer of Lytton Strachey and Bernard Shaw turns his trained eye on his kin in a thoughtful work that is as much a meditation on the nature of biography as a family memoir. Basil Street Blues has its origins in recollections Michael Holroyd asked his parents to write in the late 1970s， long after their 12-year marriage had ended. They agreed about little， not even the date of their son's birth in 1935， and Holroyd probes these discrepancies with the same brisk lucidity he has brought to subjects less intimately connected to his own life. Readers accustomed to the woe-is-me authorial stance frequently assumed in currently fashionable memoirs of familial dysfunction will be surprised by the impartial sympathy and considerable humor with which Holroyd depicts the financial， social， and sexual missteps of his parents， grandparents， and other relatives. Perhaps it's Anglo-Saxon stoicism inherited from his British father， perhaps the Scandinavian fatalism of his Swedish mother， but Holroyd has an impressive ability to view even his own youthful unhappiness with calm detachment. His elegantly written chronicle of "secret episodes and half-suspected dramas" nicely achieves its declared purpose: "to pare back a little the cuticle of time and to apply the research methods I have learnt as a biographer to my own life." --Wendy Smith From Publishers Weekly Affectionate and wry， Holroyd's memoir of his dysfunctional family contrasts sharply with his lives of Lytton Strachey， Augustus John and Bernard Shaw， which have earned him a major reputation as a biographer. His parents， grandparents， aunts and uncles are largely what Shaw would have called "downstarts"--people crumbling from comfort and even affluence into pinched existences. Apparently of no serious consequence or achievement， they are nonetheless worth reading about because they have escaped ordinariness through Holroyd's ability to capture their extravagances. Holroyd prides himself on achieving "a good walk-on part in one's own autobiography，" and while he succeeds in that， the tale's charm emerges from his mother and father， Swedish and British， respectively: their meeting onboard a ship; their secret marriage; Holroyd's childhood with assorted adults， including grandparents and stepparents; his parents' separation and subsequent episodes in their lives. Among the delightfully recounted anecdotes is one about Holroyd， as a young man， drafting a letter for his mother explaining why she was deserting his stepfather to go to South America; at his stepfather's request ("'You're a writer，' he said")， Holroyd then penned a reply to his mother， which began "what， for eighteen months or so， was to be an elaborate international correspondence with myself." As he weaves his own life lightly in and out of his family's vagaries， he leaves behind the handicaps of impecuniosity， shyness and miseducation and finds himself among helpful literati， becoming one of them. Although this title is what writers refer to as a between-books book (Holroyd is researching a new biography)， it rises artfully above that class. (Mar.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information， Inc. See all Editorial Reviews