A sensitive chronicle of a biographer’s search for truth.
An intimate look at the life and loves of Carson McCullers (1917-1967).
“To tell another person’s story,” Shapland observes in her deft, graceful literary debut, “a writer must make that person some version of herself, must find a way to inhabit her.” The author knew little about McCullers before she became an intern at the Harry Ransom Center, a repository for writers’ and artists’ archives at the University of Texas. Responding to a scholar’s request, she discovered eight letters from Swiss writer and photographer Annemarie Schwarzenbach to McCullers that struck Shapland immediately as “intimate, suggestive” love letters. For Shapland, at the time suffering the end of a “major, slow-burning catastrophe,” the letters marked a “turning point.” Within a week, she cut her hair short. “Within a year,” she writes, “I would be more or less comfortably calling myself a lesbian for the first time.” The letters inspired further research, focused especially on McCullers’ sexuality, about which Shapland found intriguing evidence in transcripts of her taped therapy sessions with Dr. Mary Mercer, begun when McCullers was 41 and which McCullers described “as an attempt of writing her autobiography.” In addition, following the sessions, McCullers wrote letters to Mercer “awash in the joy of self-revelation” and her “love for Dr. Mary.” The more Shapland discovered about McCullers, the more convinced she became that McCullers was a lesbian who had been intensely in love with several women. Identifying with McCullers “as a writer, as a queer person, as a chronically ill person,” Shapland felt she had special insight into her subject’s life. At the same time, looking to McCullers “as a role model,” she wondered if she was “reading into her queerness”: imposing her own life story, and her own needs, on McCullers, in part to rescue her from “retroactive closeting by peers and biographers.” Shapland interweaves candid self-questioning and revealing personal stories with a nuanced portrait of a writer who confessed her loves were “untouchable” and her feelings “inarticulable.”
A sensitive chronicle of a biographer’s search for truth.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-947793-28-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Highly detailed and as exciting as the best Patrick O—Brian novel, this is one of the best accounts of the great British admiral’s dazzling achievements, from the deputy director of England’s Royal Naval Museum. Published to commemorate a pivotal year in the “Nelson decade” (the period from 1795 to 1805, of which the bicentennial is currently being marked), this brief account looks at the period that solidified Nelson’s position as Britain’s chief hope in maintaining her position as the world’s leading maritime power. The author combines outstanding scholarship with narrative skill to capture the excitement of such events as the evacuation of Elba, the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, the blockade of Cadiz, and the attack on Tenerife (in which Nelson lost his arm). White also debunks many of the myths that have surrounded Nelson over the years, such as his supposed disobedience at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent—a “disobedience” that saved the battle and won an earldom for Sir John Jervis, the commanding admiral of the British fleet at St. Vincent. Illustrated throughout by period paintings (unfortunately not in color), the book utilizes boxed sidebars to present new information on Nelson and his battles. This varies in importance, from done-to-death topics like who really cut off Nelson’s arm to such really juicy bits as the revelation that a former Nelson mistress, Adelaide Correglia, spied for him during his blockade of the Italian port of Leghorne (Livorno). Written with sweep and excitement, capturing the spirit of Nelson by looking at one memorable year, this will be a treat for any naval history fan.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7509-1999-X
Page Count: 176
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
It wasn’t all blood and guts—coffee and doughnuts played a part in the story of WWII, as related in these letters and journal entries from an American Red Cross worker based in England during that war. Norwalk joined the Red Cross in May 1944, only a month before the Allied invasion of Normandy (D-Day). The volunteers were issued helmets, uniforms, and instructions on what to do if they were captured by the enemy. Their day-to-day lives involved fighting shortages of personnel and equipment and the British propensity for stopping everything—including troop movements—for tea. But also, says Norwalk, “We were expected to be the friend, the girl next door, the kid sister, the funny aunt” to the US troops en route to France and Germany, even as Nazi bombs destroyed military and civilian targets in England. In less than five months, her Red Cross crew saw two million American soldiers debark from South Hampton, England, to Europe. This book is also a love story—or more precisely, several love stories, as one by one, she and members of her crew fell in love with young servicemen. She chronicles her romance with the blue-eyed major who was such a good dancer; they married and lived happily ever after in Seattle, recently celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. After WWII, the Red Cross volunteers with their ubiquitous coffee and doughnuts were often parodied. This story recalls that their cheerful faces, willingness to sing, dance, listen, write letters, and lend a hand with personal problems was invaluable in what was then called the “war effort.” No Saving Private Ryan drama and mayhem here, but a low-key story of courage and dedication to duty whose reward was this: “We were vitally alive, living at full speed, working together for a cause we believed in.” (28 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: March 12, 1999
ISBN: 0-471-32049-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
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