Alive, Alive Oh! And Other Things that Matter by Diana Athill, book review

At 97, Diana Athill reflects on heartbreak, fashion and growing old

Joie de vivre: Diana Athill brings joy with her essays (Susannah Ireland)

Old age is no longer a taboo topic, just one of the many subtle but significant shifts made in response to the growing ageing population, but when Diana Athill published her memoir Somewhere Towards the End seven years ago in 2008, she was just as surprised as anyone that it proved so popular.

Having written much fiction, and what now amounts to a host of autobiographies, rather than fading away into obscurity as so many retirees fear, she has become something of a literary celebrity in her twilight years. Not to mention the transition made from publisher to writer (a founding director at André Deutsch, she worked as an editor for more than 50 years, shaping the work of VS Naipaul and Jean Rhys among others).

It might be a cliché to say that, with this publication, she shows little sign of slowing down. It is a collection of ten essays rather than a single continuous piece, but given Athill will turn 98 this December, this episodic structure was undoubtedly born out of the same kind of practical thinking that led the 94-year-old performer and artist Ilona Smithkin to explain in the 2014 documentary Advanced Style that at her age she could no longer risk buying green bananas since there was no guarantee she'd be around long enough to see them ripen. This bite-size approach certainly doesn't make it any less enjoyable to read though.

Six of the essays have previously appeared elsewhere. That which lends the book its title, an account of the near-deadly miscarriage Athill suffered in her forties, was originally published in 2004, but the others have all been composed since Somewhere Towards the End. Readers of her previous works will recognise some familiar subjects and events. The setting of “My Grandparents' Garden” also featured in Yesterday Morning, Athill's memoir of her childhood; and in “Lessons” she revisits the pain of her first heartbreak, when she discovered her fiancé, after two years of war spent apart, had married someone else – a theme she previously wrote about movingly in Instead of a Letter. That memoir that also contained a wonderful description of the transformation involved in wearing a chic evening dress – “making me feel like a mermaid, a swan, a willow tree, making me move differently, making me ready for love” – that she elaborates on here in “A Life of Luxuries”.

One of my favourite pieces in the book, it's a mini memoir in clothes, from her longing for a fur coat while an undergraduate at Oxford so she could look as elegant as Katharine Hepburn, through the maxi skirts she favoured in the Seventies, to a rekindling of her sartorial passion since she's discovered the joys of mail order shopping.

Perusing the catalogues, she confesses, feels “almost like leafing through Vogue used to feel”, and a few uncharacteristically pricey acquisitions have led to the revelation that the more “guilt-inspiring” the choice, the more successful the purchase. That's a life lesson if ever I heard one! This is a book infused with joie de vivre. Athill is the opposite of the crotchety old curmudgeon who laments the passing of their youth or regrets life's missed opportunities. Instead she delights in the experiences she has had – even those that weren't necessarily enjoyable at the time – and the life she is very much still living.

“The Decision” dispels plenty of myths about life in a home for old people, highlighting instead the “luxury of being free of domestic worries and knowing that kind care is available if one needs it”. In it she recounts a heart-warming and hilarious anecdote about planting a bed of roses, organised by a large enough group of residents so between them could provide both the brains and brawn needed for the task. Unfortunately, when it actually came down to it, most forgot to turn up, “something only too likely to happen at any event in a home for old people”, Athill muses wryly, leaving her and two 94-year-olds, one of whom was “nearly blind,” to draw on reserves they didn't know they had as they bravely soldiered on alone. “One good thing about being physically incapable of doing almost anything is that if you manage to do even a little something, you feel great.”

Granta, £12.99. Order at £11.69 inc. p&p from the Independent Bookshop