cover image For Sylvia, an Honest Account

For Sylvia, an Honest Account

Valentine Ackland. W. W. Norton & Company, $13.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-393-02297-1

In this soul-searching ""record of blundering from shame to shame,'' Ackland (19061969), a shy, sensitive English poet and dealer in antiques, writes of her desperately unhappy childhood, emotionally disturbed adolescence and young womanhood, ``amorous lusts'' and lesbian experiences, disastrous marriage, return to the Catholic church, long struggle to free herself from an addiction to alcohol and, most of all, her 40-year relationship with the novelist, short story writer and music scholar Sylvia Townsend Warner, whom she calls her ``sun.'' Poignant and sometimes painfully frank, this is also an account of joy and happiness and of the power and truth of her life with Townsend Warner. (April 28)