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Recent Reviews
Cathy Curtis
Positive The Boston Globe It’s refreshing to read a history of Hardwick that lasts more than a few paragraphs and pictures her solo ... informational, fact-centric, unsurprisingly since Curtis is not only a biographer, she was once a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. That’s underscored, however, by a lack of living voices contributing to Hardwick’s account ... The best moments of the biography are when Hardwick’s own voice gushes forth, primarily in anecdotes from her later years ... Her voice, when captured, lifts her portrait out of black-and-white.
Heather Clark
Positive The Boston Globe ... massive, insightful ... suggests the biology of her mental illness. Clark also captures the frenetic pace of Plath’s life ... A clear light shines on Plath’s biting wit, even in jottings from her lowest moments ... The electric images and honed line breaks of Plath’s poetry surface more frequently toward the end of Red Comet” with Clark’s close commentary and nods to the work’s indebtedness to the literary influences of the day ... a critical examination of what it means to be a female artist, to suffer from depression, and to be alone, as it is revelatory about this one particular life and the art that came from it. The red comet (an image from her poem \'Stings\') is an apt metaphor for Plath, but more interesting is Clark’s focus on Plath’s internalization of James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and a sense of \'Icarian lust.\'
Kay Redfield Jamison
Rave The Boston Globe Having written extensively as a clinician about intersections between creative genius, madness, depression, and suicide, Jamison examines Lowell’s writing and turmoil. She charts the advent of lithium for his treatment and intricately maps the confluence of hypomania with increased productivity, weighing the effect the illness had on his art ... Jamison’s understanding of literature is also 'fast, compound, legendary'; she draws from a vast knowledge while disclosing this larger than life poet who was loved, hated, and because of brain chemistry, often misunderstood. In addition to the luminaries quoted, her account is enhanced by memories offered by his daughter Harriet Lowell, and the inclusion of previously unreleased medical records that chart his, and his many relatives’, experiences with mental illness.
Megan Marshall
Positive The Boston Globe [Marshall] fluently captures Bishop. Still, despite new information from the Vassar archive, there is something that resists exposing. Perhaps that’s why Marshall chooses to frame her biography with autobiography ... Even so, as biographer she probes Bishop’s psychology, love life, and feelings about her contemporaries with surprising completeness ... Until now, our knowledge of Bishop’s personal life has largely been limited to her fractured relationship with the Brazilian Lota and her suicide — this is partly owing to the fact that interest in the perfectionist Bishop, whose lifetime output was modest, has grown considerably since her 1979 death. Marshall has unearthed more, some of it stunningly intimate.
Jonathan Bate
Mixed The Boston Globe Lacking the personal intimacy of Elaine Feinstein’s 2001 biography, Bate’s book maintains a distanced, scholarly tone through even the darkest material, magnified by his inability to quote freely. Still, he captures the nadirs of a complex emotional life, as in his record of Hughes’s comments after Plath’s funeral...