Description
Book SynopsisAfter falling in love with and marrying a man two lifetimes older than her, Irving Layton's last wife shares the story of her life with the acclaimed poet.While a student at Dalhousie University, Anna Pottier attended a poetry reading featuring Irving Layton. Walking out of the auditorium that night, she knew two things: she wanted more than ever to be a writer, and she wanted to be with Layton.
At the age of twenty-three she became Layton's fifth and final wife; she was forty-eight years his junior. She shared the entirety of his world and was intimately involved in the writing and publication of such books as
The Gucci Bag,
Fortunate Exile, and
Waiting for the Messiah. She accompanied Layton on his last major overseas reading tour, broke bread with Pierre Trudeau and Leonard Cohen, met other luminaries, and watched Layton write his very last poem.
But slowly, Layton was changing. In 1992, a doctor put names to these changes: Par
Trade ReviewIn Good as Gone, Pottier vividly captures the impersonal cruelty of aging and conveys the love and creativity of their marriage. She writes how she still misses the man and poet who has made so many of her days extraordinary, the memoir a heartfelt testimony to this truth. * Montreaserai,com *
