Good Company, by Frances Partridge

It's always a pleasure to go back to Frances Partridge's diaries. For several reasons: I really like her personality, she must have been a very kind and warm person, passionate for life and friendship. Above all, I admire her capacity to keep making her life as interesting as she could, mostly out of her relationships with her friends, the good company of the title. Even over 60, she was still trying to make sense out of life, through reading, conversation with intelligent people, travelling. I like her keen observations about people and places and events, and I find her rending of her friendships extremely interesting and realistic - the way she conveys all the ambiguity and complexities of long term friendships is especially to the point when she describes her relationships with Julia Strachey or Gerald Brenan, who emerge from her depictions as real and lively people (not so much Janetta Woolley, who seems kind of lame).