I really wanted to like this book - the description made it seem far more interesting and exciting than it actually was. This book follows a real-life discovery of 148 diaries in a skip and the attempts to unravel the mystery behind the identity of the diarist. However, the author doesn’t seem in any hurry to get to the bottom of this which I found frustrating. Instead, Masters takes his time, using unusual methods of learning about the diarist (consulting a graphologist, hiring a detective, his own speculation and musings) so much so that it gradually becomes very difficult to feel invested in his search. While some may think that this slow, drip-feed of information increased the mystery, it just left me scratching my head. I found it was just too much hard work and too frustrating and fractured to really enjoy.

As soon as I read the synopsis of this book it intrigued me, imagine finding 148 diaries in a skip with no clue to who they belong to!. Well Alexander Master did just that, and what hands they fell in to as he is an award winning biographer. We follow the riveting journey until he uncovers the identity of the author but along the way he writes which such skill that he makes you care and its very touching.
A very different book that makes you stop and think and I'm glad I read it.
My thanks go to Netgalley in providing me with this ARC.

This was a difficult book to read and review. It is the most unusual book I have read to date but it slowly drew me in and I ended up enjoying it.

When 148 notebooks are discovered in a skip in 2001 and subsequently handed to the author, a mystery is revealed about the person that wrote the diaries. It takes 5 years to unravel the history and identity of the diarist and the reader is given a disjointed glimpse into the mind of this person.

The unusual writing technique was difficult to get used to and hence I only awarded 3 stars. It is a mixture of passages from the notebooks as well as the interpretation thereof by the author. At times, it was confusing and I was not always sure whose voice I was reading.

The notebooks are not written as a conventional diary, rather they reflect the internal dialogue of the author, known only as ‘I’. Masters decides that he does not want to know the identity of the author but as he delves deeper into the notebooks clues are revealed that start to make this impossible.

I was determined to know more about the author and this kept me turning page after page but I will not spoil the ending.

A unique book that I am sure will be enjoyed by many readers.

Gillian

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

As someone who has kept a journal for over 15 years I was very intrigued to read “A Life Discarded”, framed as a biographical detective story. In 2001, 148 notebooks were found in a skip in Cambridge. They were all journals of a mysterious figure. The book then sets out to discover more about the mystery diarist and try and piece the journals together to find out the story of their life. This novel was supposed to be many things but in the end it wasn’t much of anything really, the writing constantly getting lost and demonstrating a lack of real depth.

The author at times seemed almost cruel in his investigation of her life, desperate to try and find a story when there never really needed to be one. He questioned that the mysterious diarist “filled the pages with words but didn’t know what the words said”. The author meets a typographist, desperate to analyse the writing, however it loses track from whatever he was trying to figure out in the first place.

The book’s obsessive intrigue into the character always feels slightly cold and unpleasant. When the book reaches its conclusion, there is no warmth in how everything is tied up and I know for sure I would not want my future journals to be dissected like this. An uncomfortable read.

When I first picked this up, I did so not realising it was non-fiction. It is not my normal type of reading material, but then that’s part of its charm – it doesn’t pigeon-hole neatly into any particular genre. I found myself fascinated about “I” and her life as it was discarded and as is then slowly revealed. Gradually learning her background and eventually her name and her current story was like peeling off layers to get to know the person beneath. It’s a fine piece of dedicated research and really rather heart-warming. A unique read.
The librarian in me is however dumbfounded that the author didn’t put the diaries into chronological order right from the beginning in order to follow I’s life and to reveal her history logically. This probably explains is why he is a successful biographer and I am a librarian!

I'm not really sure exactly what I expected from this book, but what I got was not it. I think I expected more of interesting details from the actual diaries that were found but the extracts just didn't grab me. The book did get slightly better towards the end but by then I just wanted to be done and know who the diarist was. There were some moments of slight humour but I found it hard to form any feelings about either the author or the writer of the diaries. Sadly, a bit of a let down.

Well what an unusual book! However also a lovely little read, didn't take long to get through the book and I really enjoyed it, loved that it was so different from anything I'd previously read and I can't wait to see what he offers up next!

I found this a fascinating book and one which I will read again, looking for clues and taking more time poring over drawings (of which more later). Although I recalled having read something about the finding of diaries in a skip relatively recently I could not recall when I started this book whether the whole was indeed fact or cleverly crafted fiction and I decided not to pursue this until I had read the book. Whether fact or fiction it is hard to further categorise this book - is it a biography or is it the story of a very long term research project? The tale starts with the finding of 148 diaries in a Cambridge skip by two academics and the subsequent passing of these to the author of this book. The unlikely image of two academics 'midgy-raking' (a glorious Scottish term for scouring through bins in the hunt for something useful) led me to think this was probably fiction. The author then slowly reveals in no particular order some of the content of the diaries which is not only written but also drawn in quick pencil sketches. It would appear the diarist was a woman living in England in the second half of the 20th century and the diaries cover a span of around 50 years from 1952. As might be expected from diaries the diarist is unnamed and part of this book is the author's dilemma as to whether he wants to find out her identity or write a biography of an unknown 'Everywoman'.. This Everywoman has certainly had a certain tenacity and self-discipline to have kept detailed diaries for such a long time writing about her emotions, anxieties and daily life, supported by many illustrations. She was an artist and musician although not in a professional capacity. Employment came in various forms including librarian and housekeeper. Intriguing characters such as Peter, her 'gaoler' and E, the object of her love, are frequently discussed over a lengthy time period. The author's decision not to approach the diaries chronologically ( at least initially) helps to weave a mystery around the identies of these characters which at times overshadows any question of the identity of the diarist herself. As to whether this is fact or fiction I leave this to readers to discover for themselves as it enhanced my reading to be uncertain. I would recommend this book to those who enjoy a mystery, lovers of social history and fans of biographies.

A Life Discarded is a strange book I loved the idea of someone finding all those diaries in a skip and writing a book about them .However I did find it very frustrating and slow going and wondered why the person who had written the diaries had thrown them away had he died ?The author had put in a lot of hard work trying to discover who had written the diaries .The book is quite entertaining but not for me .

What happens when a biographer is given a load of old diaries that have been found in a skip? The biographer tries to uncover who has written them and, more importantly, what had that person's life been like. This is an interesting and entertaining book, but not as good as the writer's previous biography. I felt a lack of sympathy for the writer of the diaries, which stopped my enjoyment of the book.

In an electronic world dominated by smart phones, tablets and online storage, it is refreshing to read a book that features the humble diary. Not just one, but 148 notebooks covering 50 years. The way that the diaries were discovered and the initiation of a prolonged investigation by the author over 5 years is very well done, involving the use of humour at times but ultimately producing an interesting outcome.

This is a fascinating insight into social history and I recommend this book to others to enjoy. Prepare to be shocked!

A Life Discarded by Andrew Masters is the true story of a huge number of diaries found in a skip. They were discovered by an academic who was diagnosed with cancer and passed them to Masters to read and publish. Masters is a biographer, so who better to decipher and reconstruct in biographical format?

There's certainly an interesting story here, but I found the narrative slightly confusing and occasionally irritating. There's seems no rhyme or reason as to the order of the content. Masters is keen to keep the great reveal to the very end of the book, so the reader embarks on a whimsical and often idiosyncratic journey as various red herrings are dropped. There are 148 diaries spanning some 50 years of often eccentric jottings and Masters determines to identify the writer.

In the end, there's a poignant reveal and a linear reconstruct. I enjoyed much of the diary content; it's original, and witty with its own language and doodles. Once started, I wanted to know the outcome, but I think Masters has perhaps tried to be a little too clever and his style became intrusive and occasionally disrupted a more interesting story. That aside, it's still an unusual and compelling read.

My thanks to the publisher for a review copy via Netgalley.

"It was an ordinary pocket notebook, ambushed by a person's desperation to record his or her life."

A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in a Skip will be published in the UK on 5th May 2017. It is written by Alexander Masters and published by 4th Estate.

I was really excited to read A Life Discarded because the author, Alexander Masters, wrote Stuart: A Life Backwards, which I loved (the film is also amazing, Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch being brilliant). However, I think, like a lot of other reviewers, this book just didn't live up to the level set by Stuart. A Life Discarded is a unique, intriguing book, and I definitely enjoyed reading it, but I think it unfortunately fails by being compared to its older, prettier, more accomplished sister (does that work as a metaphor?)

Masters is a biographer, but instead of celebrities or historical figures, he focuses on finding the extraordinary in the ordinary; writing about people who normally fall through the cracks. This is something I love about the book; the slow discovery of a personality that is just one of the people walking down the street, and looking behind the ordinariness of them.

The diarist, or 'I', is an interesting character yet also very sad. In this 'I' encapsulates a lot of people's hopes and dreams. The diaries range over many years, so we see the diarist's rather naive hopes and dreams and then the eventual pattern of their life. Masters doesn't reveal the diarist's life in order, so you can immediately see how the dreams match up to the future. In this way I think it really works that the book isn't in chronological order. Masters pulls out elements from the diarists life and examines them, as opposed to going through the life point by point.

I definitely empathised with the diarist's young dreams to be a writer and rather egotistical belief in their own writing skills. I'm pretty sure I had the same worry when I was younger that I would die before being able to provide the world with my works of genius (my ego had deflated a little since then).

"I cling to life very desperately - I feel I could do great things - very afraid of physical disaster, nothing could be worse - could not bear to die before I had given my gifts to the community - have already suffered so to bring my gifts towards fruition."

Without giving much away, this extract sums up the diarist well; unintentionally funny, pretentious, desperate, relatable and also very sad.

While the non-chronology works in some ways, I found in others it was frustrating. Maybe it's just not for me but the jumping around did confuse me a bit. I also wanted to hear more from the actual diaries themselves. Masters describes his discoveries or feelings and backs up his points with quotes from the diaries, like a GCSE essay.

It's difficult to write much more without giving away too many details. Though, I will say that Masters does demonstrate his ability to capture characters humorously. As in Stuart: A Life Backwards, he brilliantly interweaves humour and sadness, but not in a rollercoaster kind of way, they both exist at the same time throughout the book.

Yet, while I did enjoy A Life Discarded, I didn't love it. I suspect it's because I keep comparing it to Stuart, which I'm trying not too but it's difficult. Especially as I found Stuart is more likeable than 'I'.

My Rating: 3/5

I received a copy of A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in a Skip via NetGalley in return for an honest review. My thanks to the author and publisher.

Biographer Alexander Master’s latest highly unusual subject following his acclaimed 2006 “Stuart: A Life Backwards” (excellent TV adaptation starring Tom Hardy in 2007) and “Simon: The Genius In My Basement” (2012) made its presence known following a discovery in a skip. A friend found 148 diaries abandoned in Cambridge. He passed them on to another friend and when she became ill Alexander became the keeper of this extraordinary find, a vast number of diaries and notebooks filled with great intensity over a period of decades by person unknown.
What Masters had in his home was the work of the most prolific diarist of all time (Guinness Book of Records had recognised “newspaperman” Edward Robb Ellis’ 22 million words but here is something like 40 million words ) a record of one life and found in a skip.
It took Masters five years to discover the identity of the diarist. The words became something of an obsession for him. He pored over the writing looking for clues, at writing which became smaller as the writer aged becoming miniscule in later volumes. A life which had begun with hope and optimism with many potential avenues became frustrated, disturbed even close to madness as the sequence continued.
I’m purposely giving little away about Masters’ subject because the gradual uncovering of the biographical details is one of the great strengths of this book. Biographers obviously begin with research and getting to know and understand their subject before putting pen to paper, here we get a fascinating alternative process of nothing being known and everything having to be deduced from a personal monologue. Diaries are not the best way to discover some things, even the basic biographical details such as gender, name, description is rare in this type of personal writing (why would you write about the things you know already?) and remained very much hidden amongst the millions of words. The very nature of diaries is their tendency to be outlets for outpourings of the irrational and unanalysed. So how much of a person’s life is actually revealed in this way?
This is certainly a real life with a difference and it is the process rather than the life itself which becomes gripping. Extracts from the diary are not as prevalent as might be expected and are more used to put together a picture of the writer and why their life’s work ended up in a skip. It reminded me occasionally of Alan Bennett’s “Lady In a Van” but instead of the physical presence of Miss Shepherd turning up outside in her old van here we have the presence of the 148 volumes which takes over Master’s existence in much the same way as Miss Shepherd did.
Another strength is how Masters’ biography has to shift gears as details are uncovered. We have seen this recently in Kate Summerscale’s “The Wicked Boy” which changes track when research brings something astonishing about her subject to light but Masters is doing this all the time as assumptions are proved incorrect often built from passing remarks and gut feelings. The twists and turns in the development of his narrative are really quite thrilling.
There, I think I’ve completed this without giving much away. This book is best approached as a blank slate to really get maximum enjoyment from it. Read it before you find out too much about it.

A Life Discarded was published by Fourth Estate in hardback in May 2016 and in paperback in February 2017. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the review copy.

This was a very strange story. The synopsis sounded interesting but I couldn't get to grips with the story.. I didn't take to any of the characters, they all seemed very insubstantial and the storyline very rambling. Not for me I'm afraid.

A very interesting premise that is totally lost in a wandering ramble weighed down with too much detail about unimportant trivia. There is about a page of story about the diary writer surrounded by multiple pages describing the dimensions of the books they wrote in, followed by some meandering thoughts of the author. Very hard to keep my attention. It felt like a book written without a plan.

Different, humorous and reactive. What would happen if no one knew you existed. A life lived and forgotten. That is until someone finds scraps of diaries you had written and your life comes back full force. The story starts in the 50's and ends fifty years later. In-between the tattered pages lies a gem of history, love and personal woes. Delightful.

Ultimately I still don't know what to think about this book. At times it was upsetting, uplifting and even frustrating. It is quite a short fast read that doesn't offer as much investigation as I would have liked.

Supplied by Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

This book started with great promise. I loved the style of writing. However, the pace for me was just too slow. I was very disappoIntend and completely lost interest in the middle. I have read great reviews so maybe it just wasn't for me.

This is a really interesting book, not like anything I have read before. The author finds a huge number of notebooks left in a skip - he decides to take them away, catalogue them and read them. As he is reading he becomes more intrigued with the elusive 'Not-Mary' who never seems to find true happiness. I don't want to give too much away but it gives such an amazing insight into the woman's life. A great read.