How It Was: A Memoir Of Samuel Beckett. (Books: well seen, well said, ill done).

HOW IT WAS: A MEMOIR OF SAMUEL BECKETT by Anne Atik Faber, 30 [pounds sterling], pp. 129, ISBN 0571209106

Reminiscences of Beckett, like photographs of him, are many and telling. Anne Atik's memoir is a happy addition to the genre. It stands the tact test: how to express a (justified) sense of immense privilege while sounding or even being modest withal. Her being the wife of the artist Avigdor Arikha, many of whose portraits of Beckett illuminate the book, is a help with the modesty matter, since what she reports is not so much her friendship with Beckett as theirs. He was very good to them, with them.

True, by now such an evocation of him lacks surprise. `No one mentioned in these pages, nor anyone who had anything to do with Sam, even for five minutes, could fail …