A precocious child in Paris

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33448, 1 February 1974, Page 20

A precocious child in Paris

Weeds Grow Fast. By Taya Zinkin. Chatto and Windus. Illustrations. 160 pp. “Weeds Grow Fast” is the second volume of Taya Zinkin’s autobiography. This book starts with her arrival in Paris, aged nine, and ends with her precipitate removal from a rather sordid English school when she was 14 . . . from 1927 to 1932. The author’s description of herself indicates a spoiled and precocious child. Admittedly, her odious governess must have made life very unpleasant foi* the budding adolescent. Most women of Taya's generation suffered at the mercy of women whose obsession with sex was only equalled by their ignorance of the subject. Russian emigres tended to create a society of their own wherever they settled. Taya’s Russian-Jewish family was no exception. Her relatives were

flamboyant, emotional, capricious, and charming. The author has portrayed a

hot-house, excitable community with its roots firmly embedded in the past. They were a people who played at life, who waited restlessly for the return of an era that had gone. They were like children who must pretend so as to escape harsh reality. Unlike children, their playthings were the garnered possessions they had carried into exile and their memories of former glories. One can only deplore Mrs Zinkin’s over-liberal usage of French: particularly her attempted-phonetic renderings of the Provencal patois or the accented speech of her relations. The writer must know full well that the British are the world’s worst linguists; half-remembered school French is inadequate for the task of translating the conversations. Italicised words freely interspersed throughout the text, one feels, is pretentious and serves only to detract from, rather than enhance, the book’s worth. Nonetheless, despite these strictures, Taya Zinkin’s autobiography is recording a valuable piece of our Western civilisation and one must accord it merit on that score alone.