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Angelica is not tald of this till late in her teens. Her mother is deeply loving but refuses to set goals or expectations for her daughter. When Angelica decides to go to a private school, Vanessa reluctantly agrees, though insists that she not sit for exams in courses she dislikes. Her memories of London and their farm in Sussex between the wars are poigant and sensual. We catch glimpses of her ftamous aunt, demanding kisses from her sister and niece. Having been born in 1918, Angelica‘s life is a link from the late Victorian era to our own. As a child she is introduced to the elderly Lady Strachey who had known George Sand and George Eliot. Two memoirs this week â€" one fictional and one autobiography, as real as fiction. | read both during a week at the cottage and found them perfect summer fare, not too light, not too taxing. The novel is by Kaye Gibbons, A Cure for Dreams and the memoir is by Angelica Garnett, Deceived With Kindness â€" Bloomsbury Childhood. Garnett is the daughter of the artist, Vanessa Bell, who was Virginia Woolf‘s sister. The Bloomsbury Group was founded by Virginia and Vanessa, an amaigam of creative writers and intellectuals including the economist Maynard Keynes, poet Roger Fry, novelists E.M. Forster and David Garnett, and biographer Lytton Strachey, among others. They began meeting at 46 Gordon Square in London in 1904. In their rebellion against the artistic and social restrictions of Victorian society, they had a profound impact on avantâ€"garde British art and literature. They also opposed the sexual order, advocating friendship and "‘free love‘‘ over marriage, for which they were heralded in the radical ‘60s. Angelica comes to the realization, following her mother‘s death in 1961, that her unstructured childhood had left her deeply scarred. Her father was Duncan Grant, though she was raised by Vanessa‘s husband Clive Bell. The burden of previous generations â€" a brother of Vanessa and Virginia‘s who dies; the subsequent loss of her own brother in the Spanish Civil War â€" is a recurrent theme. As Angelica writes in the prologue: As | thought about my childhood and adolescence | began to realize that the past may be either fruitful or a burden; that the present, if not lived to the full, may turn the past into a threatening serpent; and that relationships that were not fully explored at the time can become dark shapes, in which we do not care to linger. To me, Vanessa had become such a shade. So clouded is her psyche that she marries the aboveâ€"mentioned David Garnett, who had promised to marry her when she was an infant. This is his way of getting back at Vanessa and Duncan, a fairy tale gone amok. Angelica has four daughters in succession before divorcing David. It is in witnessing her daughters reach maturity and begin their own lives that Angelica finally relinquishes the hold of the past on her own self. A Cure For Dreams is a very different book, but reading them together providing some interesting insights into both works. Kaye Gibbons writes of the American South, and has two previous novels, Ellen Foster and A Virtuous Woman. A Cure for Dreams is oldâ€" fashioned in structure and voice. Each chapter header is a brief summary. The narrator is chatting to us about her family‘s history, or at least the female version of it. Her mother, grandmother and greatâ€" grandmother all play forceful parts beginning with emigration from Ireland. Her father is a farmer and miller, who lives to work and drowns himself in the Depression. The partnership between mother and daughter envelopes their entire lives. The daughter moves away to take a business course but returns after a failed fling with a drug addict. A Cure for Dreams covers a couple of lifetimes in 170 brief pages. But, like Deceived With Kindness, | came away feeling that | knew these women, and that while I may not care for the results. I couldn‘t deny the burdens of the past. As I‘ve said before, every life tells a story, and every person‘s task is to discover their own story. Deceived With Kindness, Angelica Garnett, Harcourt Brace, $6.99 (remaindered) y A Cure For Dreams, Kaye Gibbons, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, $21.95. Chuck Erion is a Waterioo bookseller and freelance writer. Two memoirs 6 "The Complex will be used from early morning to late at night by a lot of people from all walks of life." Steve Menich o Campaign Advisor ‘ 2Ecreaton1 Complex. NEW IN TOWN? Laundry Cafe ~/Gane in w A TE“"OO Martin ans Ray‘s Laundry Cafel! LET US PUT OUT THE MAT FOR YOU! be sure to call Hours: 7 a.m. â€" 11 p.m. Mon. â€" Sun. 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