Make Believe A True Story by
Diana Athill
pbk out September 05
(Granta)
at £7.99
Diana Athill was an editor at Andre Deutsch when a black American
called Hakim Jamal became one of their authors. They struck up a
friendship, occasionally punctuated by sex, and she got to know one of
his white girlfriends who had changed her name to Hale Kimga. She was
the daughter of a British MP. Later, whilst living in a black commune in
Trinidad, Hale was hacked to death by five men who despised her for her
whiteness. Shortly afterwards, in an entirely separate incident in Boston,
Hakim Jamal was shot dead.
This is an unusual and hard to categorise little book. On the one hand, it's
hard to care about Hakim because he's alternately deranged and self
serving. Hale is a more sympathetic figure because she so clearly needs to
be loved, but with her confused philosophy and suicide attempts, the
reader knows instinctively that she's going to come to a bad end.
What makes this book worth reading is the indefatigable honesty of
its author, Diana Athill, who writes of her sexual enjoyment with Hakim
which started when she was fifty two years old. She describes, with equal
candour, the awkwardness of sharing a lover with other women and a bad
trip on LSD.
Diana had also written openly about the publishing industry in her
enjoyable biography Stet, which literally means let it stand.
Make Believe A True Story by
Diana Athill
