An incisive collection of essays by the editor of the London Review of Books, whom Hilary Mantel has called “a presiding genius” 
Mary-Kay Wilmers cofounded the London Review of Books in 1979, and has been its sole editor since 1992. Her editorial life began long before that: she started at Faber and Faber in the time of T. S. Eliot, then worked at the Listener, and then at the Times Literary Supplement. As John Lanchester says in his introduction, she has been extracting literary works from reluctant writers for more than fifty years. 
As well as an editor, Mary-Kay Wilmers is, and has been throughout her career, a writer. The deeply considered pieces in Human Relations and Other Difficulties, whether on Jean Rhys, Alice James, a nineteenth-century edition of the Pears’ Cyclopaedia, novel reviewing, Joan Didion, mistresses, seduction, or her own experience of parenthood, are sparkling, funny, and absorbing.
Underlying all these essays is a concern with the relation between the genders: the effect men have on women, and the ways in which men limit and frame women’s lives. Wilmers holds these patterns up to cool scrutiny, and gives a crisp and sometimes cutting insight into the hard work of being a woman.

Human Relations and Other Difficulties: Essays

Literature & Fiction

Wilmers, Mary-Kay

Essays & Correspondence

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

Leonid Eitingon was a KGB killer who dedicated his life to the Soviet regime. He was in China in the early 1920s, in Spain during the Civil War, and, crucially, in Mexico when Trotsky was assassinated. 'As long as I live,' Stalin had said, 'not a hair of his head shall be touched.' It did not work out like that. Max Eitingon was a psychoanalyst: a colleague, friend and protégé of Freud's. He was rich, secretive and - through his friendship with a famous Russian singer - implicated in the abduction of a white Russian general in Paris in 1937. Motty Eitingon was a New York fur dealer whose connections with the Soviet Union made him the largest trader in the world. Imprisoned by the Bolsheviks, and questioned by the FBI in a state of Cold War paranoia: was Motty everybody's friend or everybody's enemy? Mary-Kay Wilmers began exploring the history of her remarkable family twenty years ago. The result is a book of astonishing scope and thrilling originality which throws light into some of the darkest corners of the last century.

The Eitingons

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Faber&Faber

Product Description 
An incisive collection of essays by the editor of the London Review of Books, whom Hilary Mantel has called “a presiding genius” Mary-Kay Wilmers cofounded the London Review of Books in 1979, and has been its sole editor since 1992. Her editorial life began long before that: she started at Faber and Faber in the time of T. S. Eliot, then worked at the Listener, and then at the Times Literary Supplement. As John Lanchester says in his introduction, she has been extracting literary works from reluctant writers for more than fifty years. As well as an editor, Mary-Kay Wilmers is, and has been throughout her career, a writer. The deeply considered pieces in Human Relations and Other Difficulties, whether on Jean Rhys, Alice James, a nineteenth-century edition of the Pears’ Cyclopaedia, novel reviewing, Joan Didion, mistresses, seduction, or her own experience of parenthood, are sparkling, funny, and absorbing.Underlying all these essays is a concern with the relation between the genders: the effect men have on women, and the ways in which men limit and frame women’s lives. Wilmers holds these patterns up to cool scrutiny, and gives a crisp and sometimes cutting insight into the hard work of being a woman. 
 Review 
“Wilmers is a summa cum laude graduate of the Joan Didion-Elizabeth Hardwick-Janet Malcolm school of dispassionate restraint and psychological acuity. She can do more damage with a raised eyebrow than most critics can do with a mace. Her wit steals in like a cat through an unlatched window.”―Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review “Wilmers offers fascinating character studies of the authors and their subjects, both of whom tend to be “difficult” women, including Germaine Greer, Patty Hearst, Marianne Moore, and Jean Rhys. Wilmers has a voice as crisp, clear, and dry as gin, simultaneously amused and wise.” ―Publishers Weekly “Wilmers’s latest book, Human Relations and Other Difficulties, exhibits the habit of mind that has made her paper among the most read of its kind in Europe. It’s a companionable first-person report that tours the writer’s understanding of a subject, alive to the human comedy.”―Wyatt Mason, The New York Times Magazine“[These essays] demonstrate Wilmers’ occasionally supercilious yet irresistible seduction with the work at hand, plunging readers into long, involved pieces about writers’ lives, motivations, and peccadilloes ... Wilmers is a ferocious reviewer, as shown in her more general essays on the art of writing obituaries ... Insightful essays for literary-minded readers. ”―Kirkus Reviews“Taken collectively, these essays summon up the lives of women, mostly writers, who kicked against the barriers, using whatever means they could ― their sharp, stabbing minds, the power of beauty, the surrender and protest of illness, their prickly edges ― to shape often unruly lives.” ―The Financial Times“Legendary…each [essay] is a springboard for forensic discussion of the subject in question… Wilmers is highly literate, informed, aphoristic…one is left in no doubt about [her] fearsome intelligence.” ―The Herald “A collection of essays by Mary-Kay Wilmers, whose intelligence I find endlessly opaque and interesting.”― Anne Enright, The Guardian, Best Summer Books of 2018 Praise for Mary-Kay Wilmers: "A presiding genius." ―Hilary Mantel"She [has] done more for the British essay than anyone in the last 150 years." ―Andrew O'Hagan 
 About the Author 
Mary-Kay Wilmers co-founded the 
London Review of Books in 1979, and has been its sole editor since 1992. After a childhood spent in America, Belgium and England, Wilmers went to Oxford to read French and Russian. Initially planning on a career as a simultaneous translator, she instead found work as a secretary at Faber & Faber in the time of T.S. Eliot, working at 
the Listener, the 
Times Literary Supplement, and contributing to the 
 New Statesmen before co-founding the 
LRB. She is the author of 
The Eitingons, a book a

Human Relations and Other Difficulties

Picador

Human Relations and Other Difficulties: The Collected essays of Mary-Kay Wilmers

Sophie&Lori

Leonid Eitingon was a KGB assassin who dedicated his life to the Soviet regime. He was in China in the early 1920s, in Turkey in the late 1920s, in Spain during the Civil War, and, crucially, in Mexico, helping to organize the assassination of Trotsky. “As long as I live,” Stalin said, “not a hair of his head shall be touched.” It did not work out like that. Max Eitingon was a psychoanalyst, a colleague, friend and protégé of Freud’s. He was rich, secretive and—through his friendship with a famous Russian singer— implicated in the abduction of a white Russian general in Paris in 1937. Motty Eitingon was a New York fur dealer whose connections with the Soviet Union made him the largest trader in the world. Imprisoned by the Bolsheviks, questioned by the FBI. Was Motty everybody’s friend or everybody’s enemy? Mary-Kay Wilmers, best known as the editor of the London Review of Books, began looking into aspects of her remarkable family twenty years ago. The result is a book of astonishing scope and thrilling originality that throws light into some of the darkest corners of the last century. At the center of the story stands the author herself—ironic, precise, searching, and stylish—wondering not only about where she is from, but about what she’s entitled to know.

The Eitingons: A Twentieth-Century Story

Professionals & Academics

Verso

A family history that explores the KGB, the fur trade, Freud and the assassination of Trotsky Leonid Eitingon was a KGB assassin who dedicated his life to the Soviet regime. He was in China in the early 1920s, in Turkey in the late 1920s, in Spain during the Civil War, and, crucially, in Mexico, helping to organize the assassination of Trotsky. “As long as I live,” Stalin said, “not a hair of his head shall be touched.” It did not work out like that. Max Eitingon was a psychoanalyst, a colleague, friend and protégé of Freud’s. He was rich, secretive and—through his friendship with a famous Russian singer— implicated in the abduction of a white Russian general in Paris in 1937. Motty Eitingon was a New York fur dealer whose connections with the Soviet Union made him the largest trader in the world. Imprisoned by the Bolsheviks, questioned by the FBI. Was Motty everybody’s friend or everybody’s enemy? Mary-Kay Wilmers, best known as the editor of the London Review of Books, began looking into aspects of her remarkable family twenty years ago. The result is a book of astonishing scope and thrilling originality that throws light into some of the darkest corners of the last century. At the center of the story stands the author herself—ironic, precise, searching, and stylish—wondering not only about where she is from, but about what she’s entitled to know.

The Eitingons: A Twentieth Century Story

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