In the Life Writing Series, Wilfrid Laurier University Press
publishes life writing and new life-writing criticism in order to
promote autobiographical accounts, diaries, letters and
testimonials written and/or told by women and men whose political,
literary or philosophical purposes are central to their lives.
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The Surprise of My Life
An Autobiography
by Claire Drainie Taylor
“It’s an autobiography! If I tell you what’s in it
you won’t read the book.” — Claire
Drainie Taylor
Or would you? Maybe you’d be intrigued by the progression of a life
begun as an unexceptional little girl born to a middle-class Jewish
Canadian couple in a small prairie town who, at age sixteen, married
a refined Englishman, and survived the Great Depression, partly alone
in a shack in the woods of Vancouver Island. Or how, only a few months
after returning to Vancouver, with no training and minimal education,
this same young woman walked on stage at one of Canada’s finest old
theatres, and went on to a successful thirty-year career as an actress
and radio dialogue writer.
Having been compelled by her family to write her memoir, it wasn’t
until she’d finished and reread her manuscript that Claire Drainie
Taylor realized what an extraordinary life she’d led. Her descriptions
of the many fascinating incidents that make up her story, and how
she dealt with them, revealed herself to herself in a way that illuminates
what she calls “The Surprise of My Life.”
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Other books in the series