PD Smith

Elisabeth’s Lists

23 March 2018 | cities, Guardian, Lisbon, Reviewing | Post a comment

We’ve just returned from a few days stay­ing in Lis­bon — a beau­ti­ful hilly city of cob­bled streets, tiled hous­es and deli­cious food. You can see some of my impres­sions of the city on Flickr.

Before I left, I read Elisabeth’s Lists: A Fam­i­ly Sto­ry, by Lulah Ellen­der, a haunt­ing­ly beau­ti­ful med­i­ta­tion on life and death, span­ning three gen­er­a­tions of a fam­i­ly. The nar­ra­tive is anchored in a book of lists kept by the author’s grand­moth­er. The lists range from inven­to­ries of house­hold linen and a “reg­is­ter” of eggs laid by her chick­ens dur­ing the war, to what to serve at a cock­tail par­ty for eighty peo­ple. Accord­ing to Ellen­der, “Elisabeth’s lists are her fil­ing sys­tem for her trou­bles and her joys, tri­umphs and bore­dom”.

Ellen­der also explores how we use lists to bring order to the world: “these cat­a­logues hold our chaos”. As his mar­riage crum­bled, Ein­stein hand­ed his wife an impos­si­ble list of Con­di­tions for Mar­riage. Before he mar­ried, Dar­win wrote down the pros and cons of mar­riage, even­tu­al­ly decid­ing a wife would be “bet­ter than a dog any­how”.

My review of Ellen­der’s book is pub­lished in Sat­ur­day’s Guardian.

Comments are closed.