We Had It So Good
By Linda Grant
Summary
"A generational novel which opens memorably in a fur storage house in Los Angeles with its American protagonist as a boy trying on Marilyn Monroe’s coat. When he grows up, Stephen goes to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, and stays on to avoid the draft and Vietnam. He marries an Englishwoman, and they experience many of the things the baby boomer generation went through. Later the torch is passed to their children. In addition, Stephen’s father Si makes a dramatic reappearance after Stephen’s mother dies. This is a big, capacious novel, bursting with wonderful characters and ideas."
-Goodreads.com
Quotations
“He was to her exactly the same now as when she first met him: one of those Americans who believe that there were problems with solutions, rather than situations which have their own internal life and momentum.”
“But nobody of his generation, he believed was born to dies, except by accident. Life was extraordinary, the only acceptable condition. Life is my birthright."
“But I still remember the party in the garden, and the smell of flowers and the spice smell of dope, a swinging censor with joss sticks, and the smell of the pig which was being carved up, and thinking, How does it get any better than this? But also believing wholeheartedly that it would get better because surely the rest of your life was going to be parties, more parties, that would surprise and delight you."
“I keep thinking of all the people I’ve known in London, all these years of living here, they pass through your life and you have got old and they must have got old, but if you saw them you’d cry because you understood for the first time how old you are, and that's all long gone and we didn't treasure it."
“But nobody of his generation, he believed was born to dies, except by accident. Life was extraordinary, the only acceptable condition. Life is my birthright."
“But I still remember the party in the garden, and the smell of flowers and the spice smell of dope, a swinging censor with joss sticks, and the smell of the pig which was being carved up, and thinking, How does it get any better than this? But also believing wholeheartedly that it would get better because surely the rest of your life was going to be parties, more parties, that would surprise and delight you."
“I keep thinking of all the people I’ve known in London, all these years of living here, they pass through your life and you have got old and they must have got old, but if you saw them you’d cry because you understood for the first time how old you are, and that's all long gone and we didn't treasure it."