After I read about this book on Ann's blog, My Villa Life, I had to search it out. Partly because I love maps. Partly because I love London. Partly because I was intrigued by this woman's story.
I have read a bunch of background and it's hard to say whether this is a true, non-fiction biography or a historical novel. Certainly it's based on facts and many of them from Phyllis Pearsall, but there is a lot that the author had to fill in herself. I had trouble categorizing it...
I also had trouble finding it. It appears it is out of print in North America and the VPL didn't have it. But the UBC library did. So that's where I finally got it. I don't often get books from the UBC library mostly because you only get them for two weeks, not three. But, unlike the VPL, you can renew them as many times as you want as long as there are no holds.
Phyllis had a colourful childhood and yound adulthood and it definitely helped frame how the A-Z was born, but I loved the last part of the book that detailed how the A-Z came about. I love the A-Z. One of my favourite things to do when I lived in London and had enough of people was to get on the underground and get out and wander with only my A-Z as company. I figured it was pretty hard to get lost in London - if you had an A-Z you could figure out where you were and if you could find a tube station (the A-Z could tell you) then you could home. Maybe you could find yourself not knowing where you were, but you weren't lost!
I liked this book and if you like London or maps, it's definitely something worth reading. The editor side of me wasn't happy with a few things that were missed (how many siblings did Bella have? Five or eight?) but overall, I was happy with my choice.
Thanks Ann for writing about it...I never would have known it existed otherwise!
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