Background
Cressida was born in 1960. She is the daughter of British writer Cyril Connolly.
2019
Cressida Connolly with family.
Cressida Connolly
Cressida ConnollyCressida Connolly
Cressida Connolly
(Even happy days come to an end. In this remarkable collec...)
Even happy days come to an end. In this remarkable collection, Cressida Connolly explores the lives of children and young people who find themselves split in two. A conversation on a trip to the zoo heralds the end of a family; a boy watches his father fold Aunt Rose into his arms and loses his vocation; a young girl grows jealous of the attention paid to her dying sister. Examining familiar emotions - love, loss, jealousy, loneliness - with a fresh eye, "The Happiest Days" is an exciting, original, startling debut.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00WDXUDMM/?tag=2022091-20
Cressida was born in 1960. She is the daughter of British writer Cyril Connolly.
British author Cressida Connolly writes short stories about protagonists on the cusp of change: a divorced woman gets a tattoo as a physical reminder that her life is taking a new course; several other characters discover guilty secrets that irrevocably change the status quo. In Canada, a wife and mother suddenly realize the depth of her dissatisfaction with life on a family outing to the zoo. In another story, an adolescent girl catches her brother putting on her makeup and the moment stands without comment as an accurate gauge of the boy’s mental disturbance. These stories are collected in Connolly’s first book, The Happiest Days. Many of the stories center around adolescence, and many resorts to the device of dual, alternating narrators.
Connolly's next book was a family biography, The Rare and the Beautiful: The Art, Loves, and Lives of the Garman Sisters. It relates the unusual lives of the seven daughters and two sons born to a British doctor and his wife between 1898 and 1911. All "tall, gorgeous, and unconventional," according to Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman, they went on to make names for themselves in the art and literary circles of London, more because of the people they knew than because of their own works. Using Mary, Kathleen, Lorna, and brother Douglas as her main characters, the author creates an "elegantly insightful family portrait," in Seaman's opinion, as well as a look into their era. Colorful and interesting as their lives were, the siblings also had weaknesses, one of the most notable being their poor parenting skills. A Publishers Weekly writer noted that the Garmans themselves were raised at boarding schools and by servants and that the author "captures this irresponsibility as both a personal and a generational pattern."
(Even happy days come to an end. In this remarkable collec...)
"I’m not a Roman Catholic but I very much like the trappings of Catholicism, like incense, statues, relics – all the things that religious people don’t like. I particularly like the Virgin Mary because she was a good mother. When I started to have children I was worried that I wasn’t going to be a nice enough mother so I thought that if I put some Virgin Marys around the place it would remind me to be nicer."
Quotations: "I think the main thing about fiction is authenticity. If you tell the truth it strikes a chord."
Quotes from others about the person
The Vogue put it about an earlier work of Connolly's: "While so many contemporary writers tend to slap you in the face with their discoveries, she (Cressida Connolly) would rather take you with her on her journey."
Claire Harman in the Times Literary Supplement said: "Connolly is good at endings and avoids poignancy. She prefers to point up the moral instead of modulating the symbolism, and the results seem frank and unaffected, like her youthful narrators. She seems really involved with her creations and alive to their predicaments."
In 1985 Cressida Connolly married Worcestershire farmer Charles Hudson. They have three children: Violet, Nell, and Gabriel.