Ten Great Biographies and Memoirs

I read a lot of non-fiction, and although I sadly don’t have the time to review it all separately, I wanted to collect together ten recommendations in today’s post. These are all books which I have thoroughly enjoyed over the last year or so. They vary somewhat in their focus, but each delighted me, and kept me interested throughout.

1. The Robin: A Biography by Stephen Moss

‘No other bird is quite so ever-present and familiar, so embedded in our culture, as the robin. With more than six million breeding pairs, the robin is second only to the wren as Britain’s most common bird. It seems to live its life alongside us, in every month and season of the year. But how much do we really know about this bird?

In The Robin Stephen Moss records a year of observing the robin both close to home and in the field to shed light on the hidden life of this apparently familiar bird. We follow its lifecycle from the time it enters the world as an egg, through its time as a nestling and juvenile, to the adult bird; via courtship, song, breeding, feeding, migration – and ultimately, death. At the same time we trace the robin’s relationship with us: how did this particular bird – one of more than 300 species in its huge and diverse family – find its way so deeply and permanently into our nation’s heart and its social and cultural history?

It’s a story that tells us as much about ourselves as it does about the robin itself.’

2. Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter

‘In 1934, the painter Christiane Ritter leaves her comfortable life in Austria and travels to the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen, to spend a year there with her husband. She thinks it will be a relaxing trip, a chance to “read thick books in the remote quiet and, not least, sleep to my heart’s content”, but when Christiane arrives she is shocked to realize that they are to live in a tiny ramshackle hut on the shores of a lonely fjord, hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement, battling the elements every day, just to survive.

At first, Christiane is horrified by the freezing cold, the bleak landscape the lack of equipment and supplies… But as time passes, after encounters with bears and seals, long treks over the ice and months on end of perpetual night, she finds herself falling in love with the Arctic’s harsh, otherworldly beauty, gaining a great sense of inner peace and a new appreciation for the sanctity of life.

This rediscovered classic memoir tells the incredible tale of a woman defying society’s expectations to find freedom and peace in the adventure of a lifetime.’

3. A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Sweeney

‘Male literary friendships are the stuff of legend; think Byron and Shelley, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. But the world’s best-loved female authors are usually mythologized as solitary eccentrics or isolated geniuses. Coauthors and real-life friends Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney prove this wrong, thanks to their discovery of a wealth of surprising collaborations: the friendship between Jane Austen and one of the family servants, playwright Anne Sharp; the daring feminist author Mary Taylor, who shaped the work of Charlotte Brontë; the transatlantic friendship of the seemingly aloof George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe; and Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, most often portrayed as bitter foes, but who, in fact, enjoyed a complex friendship fired by an underlying erotic charge.

Through letters and diaries that have never been published before, A Secret Sisterhood resurrects these forgotten stories of female friendships. They were sometimes scandalous and volatile, sometimes supportive and inspiring, but always—until now—tantalizingly consigned to the shadows.’

4. Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson

‘Shirley Jackson, author of the classic short story The Lottery, was known for her terse, haunting prose. But the writer possessed another side, one which is delightfully exposed in this hilariously charming memoir of her family’s life in rural Vermont. Fans of Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, Cheaper by the Dozen, and anything Erma Bombeck ever wrote will find much to recognize in Shirley Jackson’s home and neighborhood: children who won’t behave, cars that won’t start, furnaces that break down, a pugnacious corner bully, household help that never stays, and a patient, capable husband who remains lovingly oblivious to the many thousands of things mothers and wives accomplish every single day.”Our house,” writes Jackson, “is old, noisy, and full. When we moved into it we had two children and about five thousand books; I expect that when we finally overflow and move out again we will have perhaps twenty children and easily half a million books.” Jackson’s literary talents are in evidence everywhere, as is her trenchant, unsentimental wit. Yet there is no mistaking the happiness and love in these pages, which are crowded with the raucous voices of an extraordinary family living a wonderfully ordinary life.’

5. Loved and Wanted: A Memoir of Choice, Children, and Womanhood by Christa Parravani

‘Christa Parravani was forty years old, in a troubled marriage, and in bad financial straits when she learned she was pregnant with her third child. She and her family were living in Morgantown, West Virginia, where she had taken a professorial position at the local university.

Haunted by a childhood steeped in poverty and violence and by young adult years rocked by the tragic death of her identical twin sister, Christa hoped her professor’s salary and health care might set her and her young family on a safe and steady path. Instead, one year after the birth of her second child, Christa found herself pregnant again. Six weeks into the pregnancy, she requested an abortion. And in the weeks, then months, that followed, nurses obfuscated and doctors refused outright or feared being found out to the point of, ultimately, becoming unavailable to provide Christa with reproductive choice.

By the time Christa understood that she would need to leave West Virginia to obtain a safe, legal abortion, she’d run out of time. She had failed to imagine that she might not have access to reproductive choice in the United States, until it was too late for her, her pregnancy too far along.

So she gave birth to a beautiful baby boy named Keats. And another frightening education began: available healthcare was dangerously inadequate to her newborn son’s needs; indeed, environmental degradations and poor healthcare endangered Christa’s older children as well.

Loved and Wanted is the passionate story of a woman’s love for her children, and a poignant and bracing look at the difficult choices women in America are forced to make every day, in a nation where policies and a cultural war on women leave them without sufficient agency over their bodies, their futures, and even their hopes for their children’s lives.’

6. A House in the Country by Ruth Adam

‘Six friends have spent the dark, deprived years of World War II fantasising-in air raid shelters and food queues-about an idyllic life in a massive country house. With the coming of peace, they seize on a seductive newspaper ad and take possession of a neglected 33-room manor in Kent, with acres of lavish gardens and an elderly gardener yearning to revive the estate’s glory days. But the realities of managing this behemoth soon dawn, including a knife-wielding maid, unruly pigs, and a paying guest who tells harrowing stories of her time in the French Resistance, not to mention the friends’ conscientious efforts to offer staff a fair 40-hour work week and paid overtime. And then there’s the ghost of an overworked scullery maid . . .

Based on the actual experiences of Ruth Adam, her husband, and their friends, A House in the Country is a witty and touching novel about the perils of dreams come true. But it’s also a constantly entertaining tale packed with fascinating details of post-war life-and about the realities of life in the kind of house most of us only experience via Downton Abbey.’

7. We’ll Always Have Paris: Trying and Failing to be French by Emma Beddington

‘As a bored, moody teenager, Emma Beddington came across a copy of French ELLE in the library of her austere Yorkshire school. As she turned the pages, full of philosophy, sex and lipstick, she realized that her life had one purpose and one purpose only: she needed to be French.

Instead of skulking in her bedroom listening to The Smiths or trudging to Betty’s Tea Room to buy fondant fancies, she would be free and solitary, sitting outside the Café de Flore with a Scottie dog at her feet, a Moleskine on the table and a Gauloise trembling on her lower lip.

And so she set about becoming French: she did a French exchange, albeit in Casablanca; she studied French history at university, and spent the holidays in France with her French boyfriend. Eventually, after a family tragedy, she found herself living in Paris, with the same French boyfriend and two half-French children. Her dream had come true, but how would reality match up? Gradually Emma realized that she might have found Paris, but what she really needed to find was home.

Written with enormous wit and warmth, this is a memoir for anyone who has ever worn a Breton T-shirt and wondered, however fleetingly, if they could pass for une vraie Parisienne.‘

8. Hungry by Grace Dent

‘From an early age, Grace Dent was hungry. As a little girl growing up in Currock, Carlisle, she yearned to be something bigger, to go somewhere better.

Hungry traces Grace’s story from growing up eating beige food to becoming one of the much-loved voices on the British food scene. It’s also everyone’s story – from treats with your nan, to cheese and pineapple hedgehogs, to the exquisite joy of cheaply-made apple crumble with custard. It’s the high-point of a chip butty covered in vinegar and too much salt in the school canteen, on an otherwise grey day of double-Maths and cross country running. It’s the real story of how we have all lived, laughed, and eaten over the past 40 years.’

9. Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man by Thomas Page McBee

‘From an award-winning writer whose work bristles with “hard-won strength, insight, agility, and love” (Maggie Nelson), an exquisite and troubling narrative of masculinity, violence, and society.

In this groundbreaking new book, the author, a trans man, trains to fight in a charity match at Madison Square Garden while struggling to untangle the vexed relationship between masculinity and violence. Through his experience boxing—learning to get hit, and to hit back; wrestling with the camaraderie of the gym; confronting the betrayals and strength of his own body—McBee examines the weight of male violence, the pervasiveness of gender stereotypes, and the limitations of conventional masculinity. A wide-ranging exploration of gender in our society, Amateur is ultimately a story of hope, as McBee traces a new way forward, a new kind of masculinity, inside the ring and outside of it.

In this graceful, stunning, and uncompromising exploration of living, fighting, and healing, we gain insight into the stereotypes and shifting realities of masculinity today through the eyes of a new man.’

10. Two Trees Make a Forest: Travels Among Taiwan’s Mountains and Coasts in Search of My Family’s Past by Jessica J. Lee

‘Combining an immersive exploration of nature with captivatingly beautiful prose, Jessica J. Lee embarks on a journey to discover her family’s forgotten history and to connect with the island they once called home.

Taiwan is an island of extremes: towering mountains, lush forests, and barren escarpment. Between shifting tectonic plates and a history rife with tension, the geographical and political landscape is forever evolving. After unearthing a hidden memoir of her grandfather’s life, Jessica J. Lee seeks to piece together the fragments of her family’s history as they moved from China to Taiwan, and then on to Canada. But as she navigates the tumultuous terrain of Taiwan, Lee finds herself having to traverse fissures in language, memory, and history, as she searches for the pieces of her family left behind.

Interlacing a personal narrative with Taiwan’s history and terrain, Two Trees Make a Forest is an intimate examination of the human relationship with geography and nature, and offers an exploration of one woman’s search for history and belonging amidst an ever-shifting landscape.’

Have you read any of these books? Which titles pique your interest? If you have any biographies or memoirs to recommend, please do!

‘West’s World’ by Lorna Gibb ****

As an author, I absolutely love Rebecca West. As an individual, I find her utterly fascinating. Thus, Lorna Gibb’s biography, West’s World The Extraordinary Life of Dame Rebecca West held great appeal for me. As Gibb writes, West was a ‘towering figure in the British literary landscape’, and I wanted to learn more about the woman behind books such as The Return of the Soldier and The Harsh Voice, which I adore.

Born Cicely Fairfield in 1892, the focus of this biography changed her name to Rebecca West after the heroine of a Henrik Ibsen play, Rosmersholm. She did so when she began to write for a suffrage newspaper, and did not want her mother to find out. West’s writing career began when she was ‘barely out of her teens, as did her notorious affair with H.G. Wells’, with whom she had a son, Anthony Panther. The relationship between both West and Wells, and between mother and son, was tumultuous, filled with drama and heartache. Gibb comments that her ‘troubles were universal and timeless. The conflicting demands of motherhood and career, the longing for love and companionship tempered by the need for independence, were spelled out in letters and diaries, articles and books, while the world changed, bringing new dilemmas and consequences. Her struggles are as pertinent now as they have always been.’

Perhaps the thing which West is most well-known for is her affair with Wells. She met him after she penned a ‘blistering’ review of his book, Marriage, in 1912. At this time, the married Wells – who was already involved in a menage á trois with author Elizabeth von Arnim – was ‘one of the most successful and famous writers of the day’. The pair soon became firm friends, and their relationship evolved, until West became pregnant at the age of twenty, in 1914. West was sent away, at Wells’ insistence, to a secluded seaside home, away from prying eyes, and was only allowed to inform her mother and sister of her pregnancy when Wells gave her ‘permission to do so’.

As one might expect from this, Wells treated her awfully, bossing her around, and leaving her alone for large parts of her pregnancy, and for Anthony’s childhood. Anthony was not allowed to refer to Wells as his father, and similar rules made by West – he was made to call her ‘Auntie Panther’ – confused him greatly. Gibb recognises that ‘For Rebecca, part of Wells was better than nothing at all. In spite of their deteriorating relationship, and his increasingly bad behaviour, she did not end their almost ten-year affair’ – this, despite her knowledge in 1923 that Wells was unfaithful to both herself and his wife.

West travelled extensively, and quickly formed intense relationships with others. She sent Anthony away to boarding school at the age of just five, and spent much of his childhood travelling around, never staying in one place for very long. She also moved in interesting, sometimes Bohemian circles, and boasted a host of famous names amongst her friends – Vera Brittain, Bertrand Russell, D.H. Lawrence, and Anaïs Nin, to name but four.

Gibbs has focused throughout on the way in which West ‘engaged passionately with the events of almost a century’. She wrote extensively about periods which affected her, and of her extensive interests. She dealt, says Gibb in her prologue, ‘with big topics, many of which still reverberate today, such as the integration of Eastern and Western religious faith, the contradictions of femininity and power, the causes and effects of war. Yet, in her consideration, she did not lose sight of the domestic concerns, those personal and intimate stories taking place against the backdrop of social change and unrest.’ West’s writing, she continues, ‘was the thread that bound together West’s public and personal worlds, her political judgements and her private tenderness.’ Her politics boomeranged from identifying as a ‘passionate suffragist, [and] an ardent socialist’ in her earlier years, to a supporter of Margaret Thatcher.

Although her output is incredibly valuable, particularly from an historical perspective, West’s real downfall, writes Gibb, was the way in which her work crossed so many different genres. It was this lack of categorisation – of the way in which West could not squeeze into ‘those pigeon holes so beloved of the literati’ – which ‘made her status as author less secure than many of her contemporaries.’

West’s World took Gibb eight years to research and write, and her incredible dedication to an author who is not well-known enough for her writing makes itself clear throughout. Gibb has been incredibly thorough here, using a wealth of different sources, but never does her biography feel overdone, or overloaded with information. Never does Gibb make West’s life feel melodramatic, as it could so easily have been rendered, given some of the occurrences throughout her life. The chronological ordering has been painstakingly handled, but Gibb does not linger for too long on a single period. There is a definite brevity to be found within West’s World.

Gibb’s prose is highly compelling, and I liked the way in which she wove West’s writing into her own. I also greatly admired Gibb’s covering of historical and societal contexts, which she does with a great deal of knowledge. West’s World is an excellent, and satisfying, biography, and I very much look forward to reading more of Gibb’s work in future.

BookTube: Biographies – To Read or Not to Read?

Book Haul (March 2017)

At the beginning of the month, I was standing in the bookshop of the Anne Frank Huis in Amsterdam with my boyfriend, deciding what to buy.  I thought I’d allow myself one tome as a souvenir of sorts, and plumped for Melissa Muller‘s Anne Frank: The Biography.  Before I went to pay for the beautiful blue covered book, I told my boyfriend that this would be the only book I’d buy all month, as I want to save up for forthcoming holidays, as well as use local libraries more.  Predictably when a bookworm utters the above words, it didn’t turn out like that at all.  In fact, I think this has been my heaviest book purchasing month in over a year…

It seems only natural then that I would want to showcase said purchases – all thirty one of them!  I feel rather ridiculous for buying so many, but haven’t spent much money on them, really (thank goodness for a slew of cheap Kindle books which I ordinarily avoid, and deals at both Fopp and The Works).

Let us begin with a huge collection of books by a single author.  I read of a comparison between my beloved Daphne du Maurier and Mary Stewart, an author whom I had heard of but never read.  Rather than buy a couple of her books just to see what I thought, I trusted the opinion of said reader, and decided to purchase a huge collection of her works from eBay.  I got nine of them in all – Thornyhold, The Ivy Tree, Stormy Petrel, Wildfire at Midnight, This Rough Magic, The Gabriel Hounds, Thunder on the Right, The Moonspinners, and Airs Above the Ground.  I did borrow her long-lost novella, The Wind Off the Small Isles, from the library to reinforce that I would very much enjoy her work; it was a fully successful exercise, and I am now even more excited to dive into my stack of Stewart novels.

I moved to Glasgow for University last year, and have, up until now, been very good at not seeking out the local Fopp.  For those of you who don’t know, Fopp is a cavern of treasures, with hundreds of films, CDs, and books.  It is owned by HMV, but is relatively inexpensive in comparison, and there is far more of an emphasis on literature and foreign films – both of which I have now stocked up with, having buckled and searched out the shop.  My haul is rather varied, but consists of eight tomes which are all on my to-read lists (somewhere!).  They are brand new copies, and cost me only £20 – bargain!  My fiction choices were I Saw A Man by Owen Sheers (whose novel Resistance I really enjoyed), Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas (an author whom I have been meaning to try for years), Les Enfants Terribles by Jean Cocteau, The Plague by Camus, and The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.  I also purchased three works of non-fiction which I have been coveting for ages – The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson, Parisians by Graham Robb, and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.

I also went to The Works, and whilst they didn’t have the best book selection (it consisted mainly of old school thrillers, celebrity biographies by many celebrities I’d never heard of, and chick lit), I did manage to unearth two interesting looking novels – Fellside by M.R. Carey, and The Perfect Girl by Gilly Macmillan – and a real non-fiction gem which I have wanted for ages, Helen Russell‘s The Year of Living Danishly.

I rarely purchase Kindle books, but I saw so many for £1.50 and below that I just couldn’t resist stocking up.  I have read a few already: We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which I must admit that I found a little underwhelming, the very witty Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, and the very odd but entertaining Peirene publication The Empress and the Cake by Austrian Linda Stift.  Those still on my to-read list are We That Are Left by Juliet Greenwood, The August Birds by Octavia Cade, Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill, A Lifetime Burning by Linda Gillard, Sweet Caress by William Boyd, and Summer House with Swimming Pool by Herman Koch.

I also received a free copy of Home Ground, a series of short stories and poems about homelessness in Glasgow, from the library.  Inspired by the Homeless World Cup which took place here last year, I thought that the collection, edited by Louise Welsh and Zoe Strachan, would be football-heavy, but thankfully it wasn’t.

I will try and resist temptation during April; watch this space!  What have you purchased this month?  Have you read any of the books mentioned above?

The Book Trail: From The Lonely City to Lions

We begin this edition of The Book Trail with an incredibly thoughtful and well-written essay collection, Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City.  As always, I am using the Goodreads ‘Readers Also Enjoyed’ tool to generate this list of fantastically intriguing tomes.

1. The Lonely City by Olivia Laing
‘What does it mean to be lonely? How do we live, if we’re not intimately engaged with another human being? How do we connect with other people? When Olivia Laing moved to New York City in her mid-thirties, she found herself inhabiting loneliness on a daily basis. Fascinated by the experience, she began to explore the lonely city by way of art. Moving fluidly between works and lives – from Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks to Andy Warhol’s Time Capsules, from Henry Darger’s hoarding to David Wojnarowicz’s AIDS activism – Laing conducts an electric, dazzling investigation into what it means to be alone, illuminating not only the causes of loneliness but also how it might be resisted and redeemed. Humane, provocative and deeply moving, The Lonely City is about the spaces between people and the things that draw them together, about sexuality, mortality and the magical possibilities of art. It’s a celebration of a strange and lovely state, adrift from the larger continent of human experience, but intrinsic to the very act of being alive.‘

 

2. The Dead Ladies Project: Exiles, Expats, and Ex-Countries by Jessa Crispin
‘When Jessa Crispin was thirty, she burned her settled Chicago life to the ground and took off for Berlin with a pair of suitcases and no plan beyond leaving. Half a decade later, she’s still on the road, in search not so much of a home as of understanding, a way of being in the world that demands neither constant struggle nor complete surrender.  The Dead Ladies Project is an account of that journey—but it’s also much, much more. Fascinated by exile, Crispin travels an itinerary of key locations in its literary map, of places that have drawn writers who needed to break free from their origins and start afresh. As she reflects on William James struggling through despair in Berlin, Nora Barnacle dependant on and dependable for James Joyce in Trieste, Maud Gonne fomenting revolution and fostering myth in Dublin, or Igor Stravinsky starting over from nothing in Switzerland, Crispin interweaves biography, incisive literary analysis, and personal experience into a rich meditation on the complicated interactions of place, personality, and society that can make escape and reinvention such an attractive, even intoxicating proposition.  Personal and profane, funny and fervent, The Dead Ladies Project ranges from the nineteenth century to the present, from historical figures to brand-new hangovers, in search, ultimately, of an answer to a bedrock question: How does a person decide how to live their life?‘

 

3. The Bad Mother by Marguerite Andersen
‘Translated from the award-winning French novel La mauvaise mère, prolific author Marguerite Andersen fictionalizes the important moments of her life resulting in this unflinching account of her relationship with her three children and her years spent following her caprices and lovers, trying to regain the agency she lost when she became a mother.  Born in Germany, Marguerite was just into her twenties when she moved to Tunisia with her French lover. She thought she was choosing a life of adventure and freedom, but what she got was children and a marriage that quickly became abusive. Constrained by the minutiae of everyday life, Marguerite longs for the agency to make her own choices. Eventually she flees, leaving her children behind for a year and a half.  As the world labels her a wife, a mother, and eventually a bad mother, Marguerite wrestles with her own definition of personhood. Can you love your children and want your own life at the same time?  A half-century later, this fictionalized account of Andersen’s life is written with brutal honesty, in spare, pithy, and often poetic prose, as she expresses her own conflicted feelings concerning a difficult time and the impact it had on her sense of self. Andersen confronts the large and small choices that she made—the times she stayed and the times she didn’t—all the while asking, “What kind of mother am I?”‘

 

4. Fifty Days of Solitude by Doris Grumbach
‘Faced with a rare opportunity to experiment with solitude, Doris Grumbach decided to live in her coastal Maine home without speaking to anyone for fifty days. The result is a beautiful meditation about what it means to write, to be alone, and to come to terms with mortality.‘

 

5. Mad in Pursuit by Violette Leduc
‘In the second remarkable volume of her life story, Mad In Pursuit, the war is finally over. A new generation of writers has appeared in Paris, among them Camus, Genet, Startre, and Cocteau, and every day, they can be seen writing at the marble-topped of the Cafe de Flore. Already in her thirties. Leduc burns with hero-worship and an obsession to become a celebrated writer herself. When she finds a mentor in none other than Simone de Beauvoir, she is pulled into the center of Parisian literary life — “a beehive gone mad. “In the no-holds-barred style that made her a legend, Leduc paints a vibrant picture of the brilliant minds around her — and the dark passions and insecurities that drove her to write.‘

 

6. Genet by Edmund White
‘Bastard, thief, prostitute, jailbird, Jean Genet was one of French literature’s sacred monsters. in works from Our Lady of the Flowers to The Screens, he created a scandalous personal mythology while savaging the conventions of his society. His career was a series of calculated shocks marked by feuds, rootlessness, and the embrace of unpopular causes and outcast peoples. Now this most enigmatic of writers has found his ideal biographer in novelist Edmund White, whose eloquent and often poignant chronicle does justice to the unruly narrative of Genet’s life even as it maps the various worlds in which he lived and the perverse landscape of his imagination. ‘

 

7. Love in a Dark Time: and Other Explorations of Gay Lives and Literature by Colm Toibin
‘Colm Tóibín knows the languages of the outsider, the secret keeper, the gay man or woman. He knows the covert and overt language of homosexuality in literature. In Love in a Dark Time, he also describes the solace of finding like-minded companions through reading.  Tóibín examines the life and work of some of the greatest and most influential writers of the past two centuries, figures whose homosexuality remained hidden or oblique for much of their lives, either by choice or necessity. The larger world couldn’t know about their sexuality, but in their private lives, and in the spirit of their work, the laws of desire defined their expression.  This is an intimate encounter with Mann, Baldwin, Bishop, and with the contemporary poets Thom Gunn and Mark Doty. Through their work, Tóibín is able to come to terms with his own inner desires — his interest in secret erotic energy, his admiration for courageous figures, and his abiding fascination with sadness and tragedy. Tóibín looks both at writers forced to disguise their true experience on the page and at readers who find solace and sexual identity by reading between the lines.‘

 

8. Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties by Christopher Isherwood
‘In 1938 the legendary Hogarth Press published the first of Christopher Isherwood’s autobiographical writings, Lions and Shadows. The book evokes the atmosphere of Cambridge as Isherwood knew it and describes his life as a tutor, a medical student, and a struggling writer. Above all, Lions and Shadows is a captivating account of a young novelist’s development in the literary culture of 1920s Cambridge and London and of his experiences as he forged lifelong friendships with his peers W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and Edward Upward.‘

 

Which of these books whets your appetite the most?  Have you read any of them?

Purchase from The Book Depository

Problematic Biographies: ‘Alan Turing: The Enigma’ by Andrew Hodges *** and ‘Dorothy M. Richardson’ by John Cowper Powys ****

Further to my question of yesterday as to whether all biographies are flawed, I thought I would write about two which I read at the tail end of last year and had problems with.

Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges ***
Like many, I purchased this because I very much enjoyed ‘The Imitation Game’; it then sat upon my TBR shelf for well over a year.  I felt that I should try my best to read it before 2016 was out, so I squeezed it into my November reading.

As far as biographies go, Alan Turing: The Enigma is incredibly long, running to 679 pages excluding the notes and index.  The whole was not as well written as I was expecting, and it did not feel very consistent in places.  The intricate mathematical details placed here and there did not always seem necessary, and it read almost like a Further Maths textbook at times.  It is quite a difficult book to categorise, and it is by no means a straightforward biography, nor a critique of Turing’s work.  It occupies a strange middleground, which consequently means that it does not sit quite right with the reader.

Turing was undoubtedly a fantastically bright man, but I thought that the telling of his story would be more compelling than it turned out to be.  I do not feel as though I’ve learnt much more about him from this volume, sadly; Hodges’ account is undoubtedly well-researched, but it is also rather disappointing.

 

Dorothy M. Richardson by John Cowper Powys ****
I borrowed this from my University library to aid with my understanding of Dorothy Richardson’s life; prior to this, I knew very little about her, if I’m honest.  It is incredibly slight; standing at just 48 pages, I wasn’t entirely sure if it would be able to give me a full picture of Richardson.  It wasn’t overly in-depth, and presented barely anything of Richardson as a woman; rather, it provides a critique of her Pilgrimage series, and how its techniques veer away from the traditional.  Regardless, it is very intelligently written, and Powys clearly admires Richardson.  I would recommend it as an introduction into her work, but I’m sure there must be a more thorough and authoritative biography out there somewhere.

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Are All Biographies Flawed?

Following a conversation which I had with one of my thesis supervisors in November last year, I have been pondering about biographies.  I was advised not to include any of them in my research, as the supervisor in question is ‘not interested in what an author was like, but what they wrote’.  Fair enough, I suppose.

From the Washington Independent Review of Books

However, my own personal stance on biographies is rather different to this.  I like to be acquainted with the work of a particular author or other historical figure before I read a biographical work about them, but I find that reading such tomes is central to my understanding of the world which they inhabited, and the influences which they had.

Whilst I’m not going to choose to eschew biographies in my reading life, it has led me to the following question – are all biographies flawed?  Is there really such thing as an impartial biography, or will there always be some sway by the author onto their chosen subject?  All thoughts on this, or on biographical writing in itself, are very welcome; I’d love to hear where you all stand.

‘Tove Jansson: Work and Love’ by Tuula Karjalainen *****

The best part of Tove Jansson’s centenary celebrations is, for me, the plethora of new books released, which showcase both her own work and her life.  The second biography of Jansson, written by Finnish art historian Tuula Karjalainen, is released today by Particular Books, and follows Boel Westin’s work, Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words, which was released in January.  Whilst the titles of both books are similar, it is Karjalainen’s which stands out, and which, I feel, provides the best insight into Jansson’s work.

Jansson was born in Paris in 1914, and moved to Finland in her early childhood.  The blurb of Tove Jansson: Work and Love states that she ‘led a long, colourful and productive life, shaped by the political, social and cultural landscape of 20th-century Finland’.  The blurb of the book says, quite rightly, that Karjalainen has conjured up ‘a vivid picture of Jansson’s extraordinary life’.  Rather than focus solely on Jansson’s literary output, as Westin’s work largely does, Karjalainen has taken into account her writing and artwork in equal measure: ‘Her life’s work is enormous.  It should really be discussed in the plural, because she had several careers – as an author of fairytales, as an illustrator, painter, writer, stage designer, dramaturge, poet, political caricaturist and cartoonist’.  Much of Tove Jansson: Work and Love has been built around the ‘decades of personal correspondence and journals’ which she was able to examine following Jansson’s death in 2001.

Tove Jansson: Work and Love was first published in Finland last year.  In her book, Karjalainen begins with a lovely section entitled ‘To the Reader’, which speaks of the early days of the relationship between Tove’s parents, Signe and Viktor.  She goes on to write about the things which she has personally gained from peering into Jansson’s life: ‘Stepping in… has been a rich and wonderful experience, though I had constantly to be aware that I might not necessarily be welcome.  Tove has been the subject of biographies, studies and dissertations written from many different points of view.  She permitted it during her lifetime, despite not always being very interested’.  The structure of the book is interesting, and certainly works well; it hovers somewhere between being a chronological and thematic account, Karjalainen believing that these elements are of equal importance in such a biography.

Tove Jansson: Work and Love is incredibly well written, and such care has been given to its translation.  Lovely photographs and beautiful specimens of Jansson’s art, all in beautiful colour, have been interspersed throughout.  Karjalainen adds new information and thoughtful musings to the impression previously given of Jansson’s life and work.  Quotes have been included from those who knew her best, and who have devoted time to examining her life.  Karjalainen has even given such thought to the book’s title; it is based upon Tove’s ex libris motto, ‘Laborare et Amare‘, the two elements of paramount importance for her.

It is clear throughout that Karjalainen has such respect for Jansson and her work, and sums her up perfectly in the following paragraph: ‘Tove’s life was fascinating.  She challenged conventional ways of thinking and moral rules in a country where old prejudices, especially on the subject of sexual behaviour, maintained a strict hold…  She influenced the values and attitudes of her time, but was no flag-bearer – instead, she was a quiet person who remained uncompromising in her own life choices’.

Tove Jansson: Work and Love is a sheer joy for all of Tove’s admirers; it is in depth, compassionate, far-reaching and absolutely stunning.  The book itself is absolutely beautiful, and its gloriously colourful back and spine are sure to delight every Moomin fan.

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Women of The Jazz Age

I have a slight obsession with inter-war novels and the lives of those people who culturally helped shape the Jazz Age. There are some amazing women who played public and literary roles whose stories I have enjoyed greatly and in honor of International Women’s day in March I thought I would list some of my forever favorite bios.

Zelda by Nancy Milford

If there was ever a muse to an author, it was surely Zelda to Scott. She was the idealized flapper to the pubic and for a while they were the enchanted couple. Hadley Hemingway once said that to watch Scott and Zelda dance the Charleston in Paris was to see it done to perfection and not to be forgotten. From the early years to the glory years and the decline of her mental health, this book has her story wonderfully compiled, and is the most complete of anything I’ve read yet on Zelda.

Rating: 5 stars

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Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s critical approval was years long in coming, despite her first piece’s success. To say she lived life on her own terms doesn’t even apply. She was a terrific and wild force. Her exploits sexually are legendary, but her relationships with her mother and anyone strong enough to get close to her, are complicated to extremes.  This is a must read for Jazz Age enthusiasts.

Rating: 5 stars

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‘Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin’ by Marion Meade

Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin by Marion Meade

Not technically biography, but more a chronicle of the lives of four pillars of the Jazz Age woman. Dorothy Parker, Edna Thurber, Zelda Fitzgerald and Edna St. Vincent Millay are followed yearly from 1920 through 1929. This is a mixture of social history, biography, gossip and overview of their lives. I did like how it was done one year at a time. It was a nice way to show parallels in their lives and careers. A fun addition to full biographies, it is less formal and is a quick read.

Rating: 4 stars

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