Must You Go?: Book summary and reviews of Must You Go? by Antonia Fraser

Must You Go? Summary

In this exquisite memoir, Antonia Fraser recounts the life she shared with the internationally renowned dramatist Harold Pinter. In essence, it is a love story and a marvelously insightful account of their years together, beginning with their initial meeting when Fraser was the wife of a member of Parliament and mother of six, and Pinter was married to a distinguished actress. Over the years, they experienced much joy, a shared devotion to their work, crises and laughter, and, in the end, great courage and love as Pinter battled the illness to which he eventually suc­cumbed on Christmas Eve 2008.

Must You Go? is based on Fraser's recollections and on the diaries she has kept since October 1968. She shares Pinter's own revelations about his past, as well as observations by his friends. Fraser's diaries--written by a biographer living with a creative artist and observing the process firsthand--also pro­vide a unique insight into his writing.

Harold Pinter and Antonia Fraser lived together from August 1975 until his death thirty-three years later. "O! call back yesterday, bid time return," cries one of the courtiers to Richard II. This is Antonia Fraser's uniquely compelling way of doing so.

Must You Go? Reviews

"This is a wonderful testament to romance, love, shared humor, and true partnership." - Library Journal

"A moving compilation of diary entries written during the course of an artistically fruitful three-decade partnership...A devoted, respectful tribute." - Kirkus Reviews

"This book — full of funny and tender things — satisfies on more than one level. It is an intimate account of the life and habits of a major artist; it is a pencil sketch of British high society in the second half of the 20th century; and it is, more than either of these things, and much more unusually, a wonderfully full description of the deep pleasures and comforts of married love." - Spectator (UK)

"Must You Go? is extraordinary by any standards. Based on the diaries she kept during her 33-year relationship with the dramatist, it is simultaneously a love story, an intimate portrait of a great writer and an exercise in self-revelation." - The Guardian (UK)

"Neither autobiography nor biography but a love story, romantic, poignant and very funny, illuminating her husband's character and creativity." - The Times

"[Writing] with exemplary clarity and courage ... Fraser keeps her gaze steady and her heart open." - The Independent (UK)

"Unremittingly delicious: strange, rarefied, frequently hilarious." - The Observer (UK)

"[Must You Go? is] told from a privileged backstage perspective, and observed with a sharp eye for social and behavioural detail ... This book works, just as it appears their lives worked, as the most touching and enduring of love stories ... The ending, brutal and unsentimentally presented yet filled with a Tolstoyan directness of feeling, is almost unbearably moving. The whole of this lovely book fills you with a gratitude that happenstance can, once in a while, not screw up and find the right girl for the right boy." - Financial Times (UK)

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Antonia Fraser Author Biography

Since 1969 Lady Antonia Fraser has written nine acclaimed historical works which have been international best-sellers. She began with MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS (1969) and followed it with CROWELL: OUR CHIEF OF MEN (1973) and CHARLES II (1979). Three books featuring women’s history came next: THE WEAKER VESSEL: WOMAN’S LOT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (1984); THE WARRIOR QUEENS (1988) and THE SIX WIVES OF HENRY VIII (1992). A study in religious extremism, THE GUNPOWDER PLOT: TERROR AND FAITH IN 1605 (1996) was followed by two books set at the court of Versailles: MARIE ANTOINETTE: THE JOURNEY (2001) and LOVE AND LOUIS XIV: THE WOMEN IN THE LIFE OF THE SUN KING (2006).

Antonia Fraser has also written eight crime novels and two books of short stories featuring Jemima Shore...

... Full Biography

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