Volume 23, Number 13 · August 5, 1976
Over the Edge
By Rosemary Dinnage
The Facts of Life
by R.D. Laing
Pantheon, 153 pp., $7.95
Anna
by David Reed
Basic Books, 243 pp., $10.00
Laing's new book is more about the factlessness of life than about its facts. It has a chill air of slackness and confusion. Laing begins with a short—too short—autobiographical sketch, which gives us a few devastating glimpses of his early life: the only child of estranged parents, his mother ill after his birth, his care at the hands of a 'drunken slut'; he and his mother sleeping in one bedroom of a Glasgow tenement, his father in the other; his mother fainting when, at fifteen, he used the phrase 'fuckin' well' without knowing what it meant; and at sixteen, still without any idea of the facts of life—hence the book's title.
Review, 1825 words
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