Bucknell goes beyond the diaries, gathering up the many strands of the writer’s personal and public lives to create a nuanced, masterful portrait of a brilliant, insecure, charismatic seeker of artistic truth and personal freedom ... As Bucknell’s definitive wide-screen biography shows us, Isherwood’s struggles were transmuted into lyrical fiction that never stopped questioning what it meant to be a man in the 20th century, and thus his art became our gift.
As a guardian of his eternal flame, Bucknell does tiptoe around some of the less noble aspects of the life ... Bucknell will not be shucked so easily. Stone by stone, she’s built up a gritty, gorgeous monument to a curiously indelible 20th-century figure.
Bucknell is scrupulously non-judgmental, and because she has all the facts at her fingertips, she is good at noticing hidden patterns in Isherwood’s life ... Some readers will admire this level of detail as properly exhaustive. Others may find it simply exhausting.
Immensely thorough ... Overall, her book is a triumph of sympathetic understanding. She has carved her subject a place in the pantheon, and the benefits of her work, to general readers as well as to scholars, will last for a very long time.
Bucknell is right to put his psychology at the heart of his work ... I’m still unsure if we need another expansive portrait of Isherwood. Bucknell’s research is deeply impressive and her judgments astute, but there are so many minor characters and small shifts of allegiance that it’s hard to keep track of the larger arguments. For the generations less familiar with him, a biography of this kind isn’t the best way to bring the work alive.
One of the dangers of a comprehensive biography is that the sheer volume of information can make for a slow, sometimes dull read. This book might have been twice as good if it were half as long ... While Bucknell clearly situates herself in relation to England and the United States, she seems unaware of how her identity as a straight woman might affect her telling of Isherwood’s life ... Despite her goal of comprehensiveness, there are two unfortunate aspects of Isherwood’s personality that Bucknell ignores: his misogyny and his antisemitism ... She might have written a fine critical biography. Instead, other than a cryptic statement in the prologue, Bucknell gives no accounting of Isherwood’s enduring popularity or importance ... I can’t find a fact, memory, or opinion advanced by Bachardy that she does not accept fully and uncritically. He is an important source, certainly, but is he as reliable as Bucknell has taken him (or needs him) to be?
Isherwood questioned everything in life, ardently examining himself, and Bucknell’s marvelously knowledgeable portrait reveals the full dimensions of his richly contemplative life.
Bucknell brings scholarly acumen and bravura storytelling to her stunning biography of novelist and playwright Christopher Isherwood ... This is a monumental achievement.
