Perspective

"Pentimento" by Lillian Hellman is a memoir of the writer's life and is written in the first-person narrative. No person could be more qualified to write this book than the person who lived through the events and knew the people who were written about than Hellman herself. Combing her intimate knowledge of the subject matter with her world-class writing skills created a rich and engaging collection of portraits of the people who impacted her life.

As a child, Lillian lived with her parents in New York City but also spent almost half of the year in New Orleans where she became close to her aunts and other relatives in the south. She therefore had roots and connections with the sophisticated northeast and the slower-paced lifestyle of the south which provided a unique richness and diversity to her writing. In writing about the early relationships she had in life...