Most families know the true history of time and chance — the sift of who and what survives, what is spoken of or glossed over; the stubborn objects outliving their owner's passion for them; the oddities of fashion; the co-editing of memory, forgetfulness and the need to forget…Sift focuses on Lawrence Sail's childhood in Exeter during the ten years following the Second World War, as well as describing his parents' pre-war travels. His father was a painter who came to Britain from Germany in 1934; his mother, the daughter of a London insurance broker.Among the book's themes are the particularity of being a twin, the prevailing atmosphere of a West Country city in the aftermath of war and the consequences of his father's commanding absence following the break-up of his parents' marriage.This is emphatically not a memoir predicated on misery — much more on the richness, bafflements and delights of a child's life, as well as the sheer beauty of the Devonian setting.
