PositiveWashington Independent Review of Books...[a] riveting new biography ... most biographies have either diminished Mahler as a flawed muse to great men or else demonized her as a man-destroying monster ... it is with great eagerness that I welcome Haste’s Passionate Spirit, the first — and long overdue — English-language biography to portray Mahler as an important and gifted figure in her own right, rather than just an appendage of great men. The author even admits in her preface that she likes Alma ... While there are no radical insights or new information that can’t be found in other published sources, Haste presents a fascinating overview of Mahler, including commentaries of her subject’s admirers and detractors, as well as many excerpts from Mahler’s diaries and letters. Far from moralizing, Haste allows readers to draw their own conclusions regarding this complex woman ... I did feel that Haste’s book lacks the depth of insight evidenced in Rode-Breymann’s and Marchl’s German-language biographies ...
I am also mystified that Haste does not seem to have read either Rode-Breymann or Marchl, which seems strange, as her bibliography references other German-language secondary sources. But all in all, this is the best biography of Alma Mahler available in English
