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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444778218</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
|author=Joanna Rakoff
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408830175</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
|author=Lynne Martin
|summary=Lynne and Tim Martin had known each other decades ago but when we meet them they've only been married for a short time. There's just one thing though - they're not ready to settle down, despite the fact that they're what might be called 'upper middle aged'. Their roots are in the US - both have adult children there and the Martins have a house in California - but they want to travel and not just as tourists. They want to see the world as the locals see it and to experience what it's like to live there. Lynne describes them as not being wealthy, but they decide to sell their home, invest the money and become 'home-free'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00J0CRNKE</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
|author=Dave Roberts
|title=Sad Men: A Memoir
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Before he was twenty Dave Roberts had had a lot of jobs - far too many to list - but he really wanted to work in advertising and specifically for Saatchi and Saatchi, whom he saw as the ''best'' advertising agency and given their predominance in the early years of the eighties it's hard to argue with his judgement. The only problem was that jobs with the agency were hard to come by and Dave eventually accepted that he would have to start rather lower down the ladder with the intention of working his way up to the top. And that rung at the bottom of the ladder was a job with an agency in Leeds.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0593071301</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
|title=A Woman's Story
|author=Annie Ernaux
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=After spending two years in an old people's home, Annie Ernaux's mother finally succumbs to Alzheimer's Disease. It has been a terrifyingly protracted end, and one that has spawned feelings of absolute helplessness in her daughter, who watched as her mother's life crumbled before an 'imagination' that bore 'no relation to reality'. Yet Ernaux's distress is also fuelled by the realisation that she'll 'never hear the sound of her [mother's] voice again', and by the fact that the fraying bond between the present and the past has finally been 'severed'. Impulsively, Ernaux decides to recreate that past, hoping to 'bring her [mother back] into the world' through a piece of writing. In short, she is 'incapable of doing anything else'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373440</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
|title=Call the Vet: Farmers, Dramas and Disasters - My First Year as a Country Vet
|author=Anna Birch
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Newly-qualified vet Anna arrives in the sleepy coastal village of Ebbourne filled with dreams of following in the footsteps of her hero, James Herriot as she starts her new role working in a rural mixed practice. She will be treating farm animals, as well as smaller pets, in a friendly community in a stunning location. However, Anna barely has time to settle in before being thrown headlong into the thick of things with two tricky calvings to deal with and plenty of muck, blood and gore. “Oh yes Mum, it’s a glamorous job...” she laments.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753555077</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
|title=Slow Getting Up
|author=Nate Jackson
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Sporting autobiographies are often written by those sports men and women who made it to the very pinnacle of their profession. Their stories surround past glories and how they lifted themselves up above the great to become the very best. However, for every superstar footballer or tennis player, there needs to be a lot more average Joes and Joettes for them to shine against. And who is to say that being an average player in a professional league is not an achievement in itself? Nate Jackson was one such ‘average’ player in the NFL – but would you call him that to his face?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00IO19CYW</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
|title=Levels of Life
|author=Julian Barnes
|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=If you read a broadsheet you will know the format of this book from when it came out in hardback – indeed I recognised a great portion of the third part as having been excerpted somewhere. Part one of this triptych is a look back at pioneering aeronauts in hot air balloons – either ''hydrogen balloons'' or ''flame balloons'', whatever they are. They may have had crash landings, they may have suffered problems here and there and risked life and limb, but they travelled, they saw the world from unique angles, and almost in homage to Barnes' characters chasing the sun in an airplane in his own book, saw themselves as a photographic negative writ large in shadow form on the tops of clouds.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099584530</amazonuk>
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