...[an] excellent new biography ... Kirkpatrick’s biography shows why we’ve much more to learn from Beauvoir than the tiresome bad faith involved in being a woman in a crassly gendered world ... If it has been difficult to appreciate this radical Beauvoir until now, this is partly due to the trashing her reputation received immediately after her death ... The Beauvoir reintroduced to us in this book is a full and critical partner in Sartre’s existentialist project. Kirkpatrick has combed through Beauvoir’s student diaries (as yet untranslated), the more recently published letters with Lanzmann, and previously uncollected and unpublished writings to show us a complex woman who knew – long before her detractors – that the stakes in existentialism were profoundly moral and political ... If 'there’s one thing to learn from the life of Simone de Beauvoir', Kirkpatrick concludes, 'it is this: no one becomes herself alone'. More than 30 years after her death, we’ve barely begun to understand what this means.

Kate Kirkpatrick shows why Beauvoir’s life and ideas are worth revisiting, and its philosophical richness is one of the book’s greatest strengths. It introduces Beauvoir’s ideas and method, shows how they developed, clarifies those that are original to Beauvoir, and highlights Beauvoir’s criticisms of Sartre’s philosophy. Kirkpatrick does so in a manner that’s accessible and steady, making it likely to appeal not only to readers new to Beauvoir, but also those who learned about Beauvoir in the traditional way. After the opening chapter introducing her approach and justification, Kirkpatrick follows a fairly standard biographical trajectory from birth to death ... Kirkpatrick’s discussion of Beauvoir’s diaries is the historical highlight of the book ... Despite the blurred lines between Beauvoir and Sartre’s thinking, Kirkpatrick methodically draws out many instances where they split intellectually and emotionally ... Kirkpatrick’s style...provokes readers by asking questions about Beauvoir’s actions and motivations. It’s a bold move to infuse a biography with these sorts of conjectures, and some may seem to be a stretch ... Beauvoir’s life is a fascinating story in itself, but Becoming Beauvoir also shows how society has been grossly unfair in its judgment of her. In a subtle way, the book also challenges readers to reflect on their own prejudices and how society continues to apply ad feminam arguments to women more generally. Beauvoir is well overdue for the philosophical credit she deserves, and this book is an important step in correcting the narrative.

... I’d have liked to learn more about what De Beauvoir has to tell us today than we are given here. Her complex, ambivalent ideas about gender as both inherent and performed can be usefully brought to bear on the current dilemmas about transsexuality. We can’t ventriloquise De Beauvoir in the present, but it would be worth dwelling with these ideas for longer than Kirkpatrick does. She gives more space to De Beauvoir’s contrary relationship with feminism, and the discussion here is helpfully rich ... There isn’t much material here that’s unknown to scholars, but the letters to Lanzmann do constitute a major new resource ... Where Kirkpatrick’s biography is strongest is in clarifying and showing the strength of De Beauvoir’s ethical commitments, and how these were transformed into political commitments after the war.

For much of the 20th century,' says Kate Kirkpatrick in the introduction to this book, 'Beauvoir has not been remembered as a philosopher in her own right.' Becoming Beauvoir is her attempt to set the record straight ...[Beauvoir's] student diaries weren’t published until 2008. Kirkpatrick has studied them all. Her 'select bibliography' runs to eight pages and the footnotes to more than 50. Not a job for the faint-hearted, but she keeps her gaze steady, her eyes clear. Much of what she finds is pretty shocking ... It’s certainly a warts and all portrait, and Kirkpatrick doesn’t try to defend de Beauvoir when defence seems hard to rustle up ... Becoming Beauvoir is a book to be read slowly and savoured. There’s too much detail to gulp it down. But it is worth the time it takes to read a fascinating portrait of a woman who inspired women around the world and who changed the way many people think.

...Kirkpatrick weaves a chronological re-creation of her subject’s influence on others, and in turn, those who impacted her intellectual, ethical, and emotional development from childhood through her student years, affairs, and career as a writer and thinker ... Marked by a clear narrative contextualizing the many key figures interacting with Beauvoir across her life, as well as the international events that also touched and affected her, this biography belongs in both academic and popular philosophy collections.