An Appetite for Life

Charles Ritchie’s first volume of diaries, The Siren Years , created a sensation when it was published in 1974. Besides winning the Governor General’s Award for Non-fiction, it was hailed by reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic. An Appetite for Life , his second volume, first published in 1977, deals with his youth in Halifax and his career at Oxford—the years when Charles Ritchie turned from a callow, blundering youth into a callow, blundering young man. As these diaries show, Charles Ritchi