Product Description

When he turned sixty-five, the playwright Simon Gray began to keep a diary: not a careful honing of the day's events with a view to posterity but an account of his thoughts as he had them, honestly, turbulently, digressively expressed. The smoking diaries is the result, in which one of Britain's most amusing and original writers reflects on a life filled with cigarettes (continuing), alcohol (stopped), several triumphs and many more disasters, shame, adultery, friendship and love. Few diarists have been as frank about themselves, and even fewer as entertaining.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #109590 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 312 pages

Sunday Times
‘Marvellous mixture of informal diary and autobiographical fragments…extremely funny’

Philip Hensher, Spectator Books of the Year
‘A ragbag of stories and reminiscences, it must be one of the funniest books I’ve ever read’

Julian Barnes, Guardian Books of the Year
‘The funniest book I read this year... cunningly presented as meandering late-night jottings, but in fact scrupulously written’

Customer Reviews

An amusing and moving personal journal
I enjoyed this book immensely and am rather bemused by the earlier reviews it has received here. The playright Simon Gray begins his diaries in his mid-sixties looking at the world around him and also back to his childhood. This is a hugely funny book, but also full of insight and honesty. Simon Gray has no illusions about himself and does not try to present a sanitised version of himself. He is frank about his faults and weaknesses and it is this that makes the book so special - it is refreshing to read a diary to which the air-brush has not been applied.

Although Simon Gray is deeply involved in the theatre of course, this is not the main theme of the book, as it concentrates more on his daily life and key events from his youth. Despite this, there are some moving accounts of his meetings with his close friend Harold Pinter during the latter's experience of suffering from cancer. Once I started this book I finished it within 24 hours - a rare event these days when few books seem to inspire me.

Gray is still at the top of his form !
If you have read Simon Gray's other volumes of diaries you will find this is a fitting addition to your collection. Gray's self-lacerating wit is still very much in evidence and despite his documented physical decay he avoids self-pity as he invites the reader into his world of cigarettes, writing and dining.

I first read Gray's volume 'An Unatural Pursuit' and was immediately hooked by his penetrating observations of his fading professional fortunes. Whether or not you like the world of theatre is irrelavent for the enjoyment of this volume. The candid observations of this brilliant and witty man in physical and carreer decline are wonmderful.

A slow burner
I picked this book up with anticipation, having read an extract of it that I thoroughly enjoyed. I expect more of the same laughs and bitter resentments, but was somewhat confounded by the full diaries. The books is more centred around Gray's plumbing of the depths of his past, heaping mockery upon himself, expressing disgust at the man he has become, and thinking about what his fifteen year-old self would have thought of his sixty five year-old self. The last forty pages are a particularly ponderous and heartfelt affair, and for my money the best part of the book.
Gray's musings on growing old, on the changes he has seen in society and youth during his time on earth, are all written down in thoroughly digestable text, rolling on in a way that is practically unputdownable. His death marks a tragic loss.