PositiveTimes Literary Supplement (UK)Katherine Rundell...has taken up the task of connecting us to Donne’s extraordinary mind through his eventful biography, and leaves one wondering how it could ever have been left aside. It’s a tempestuous tale ... Yet readers may be divided by Rundell’s prose style ... The larkiness arguably becomes slightly strained ... Rundell also peppers her text with fun anecdotes about life in Donne’s time ... She believes in grabbing and gripping the reader’s attention ... Not all readers are inattentive, though, and while some will enjoy the efforts to sparkle and charm, others may find them a little relentless ... There are quieter moments to relish, however, such as when Rundell assesses the many possible reasons for Donne’s conversion to Protestantism ... Quotations from letters and prose works as well as the poems give us a vivid sense of his distinctive voice and his intellectual intensity, restlessness, and wit; while the book is by no means lacking in serious and thought-provoking ideas ... She urgently and admirably wants us to appreciate that he understood the extremities of human experience and the transformative powers of language like no one else before or since.
