Competent biography, from all angles, and a grand story in itself. An engrossing, moving and fully rounded biography of the gentle, eager, wistful boy who fought for half a lifetime against rejection and the ridicule of the world. It is a sad story, of the ludicrously garbed, awkward, homely child, who left home at 14, determines to win fame on the stage. Of his years in Copenhagen, trying and failing; of his chance at schooling, in his late teens. Then of his writing and success, of his friends, of the failure to win the love he needed so profoundly. The Proudfit life, The Ugly Duckling, which appeared some years ago, was a good one. But this has even more sense of pace and ability to spin a good story around an interesting figure.