TRY TO TELL THE STORY(ISBN=)

　　David Thomson, one of our most celebrated film writers, gives
us a haunting, fascinating memoir about growing up as an only child
in wartime England.  He was born in London in the aftermath of
the war, where he was raised by his mother, grandmother, and
upstairs tenant, Miss Davis.  He remembers how his grandmother
brought him to a street corner to see Churchill and how the
bombed-out houses that still smelled of smoke became his
playground. We see Thomson attempt to overcome his profound sadness
at being abandonded  by his cold and distant father by finding
solace in the cinema houses.  Movies became his great escape,
and the worlds revealed in Red River, The Third Man, and
Citizen Kane helped to alleviate his loneliness and bolster
his rich imaginative life. 

　　David Thomson, author most recently of “Have You Seen . . .
?” is a regular contributor to The Guardian, The
Independent, The New York Times, Movieline, The New Republic,
and Salon.  He lives in San Francisco. 

　　“The most intimate book yet from this most personal,
intellectually present of critics. . . . [An] eloquent, open-ended
memoir.” —The New York Times Book Review
　　“Honest, observant, and at times moving. . . . Try to Tell the
Story is a fine book, modest and self-effacing but also forthright
and uncompromising.” —Washington Post Book World
　　“Moving and provocative. . . . A vital exploration of how
England, America, and the arts . . . turned him from a seething
stammering school boy into an interpreter extraordinaire.”
—Newsday
　　“The wry, alert intelligence that has always marked David
Thomson’s film criticism is here brought to bear on the complex
narrative of his own life, and, with admirable compassion and
tenderness, on those closest to him who shaped it.  Rarely has
the unwilling achievement of maturity been as honestly, astutely,
or humbly reprised as in this haunting and deeply affecting
memoir.” —Phillip Lopate 
　　“Those of us who are struck by his balance of authority and wit
when it comes to celluloid have sometimes had cause to wonder where
and how David Thomson acquired his astonishing deadpan synthesis of
lightness of heart and extreme gravitas.  Well, now—and to
borrow an expression from his ancestral ‘hood—we bloody well know.”
—Christopher Hitchens
　　“Try to Tell the Story exists—like life—on the razor’s edge
between laughter and tears, bliss and heartbreak, confusion and
compassion.  It is full of marvelous riffs on movies, music,
and sports, but at heart it is an unashamedly tender, disarmingly
open attempt to understand the mystery, the complexity, and
sometimes insanity of family life.” —Douglas McGrath