5 comments about Dust Tracks on a Road: The Restored Text Established by the Library of America (Thorndike Press Large Print Perennial Bestsellers Series).

1. This was a book I felt I needed to have read for my general education and rounding as a person.
   I am aware of what people say about the way Hurston fabricated her life for this autobiography, but isn't all of history in some way fabricated and presented through someone's eyes? I mean, this is a highly subjective field, even when presenting mere facts, it is so easy to skew things when deciding which bits to leave in and which to take out. We all do it, Hurston is no exception.
   The spirit and nature of her life was captured beautifully: a sad (very), positive, hopeful, stubborn, opinionated, strong, resilient, hard-working woman. A remarkable woman in every way that I can see, and I feel right to have spent some time honouring her life by reading her story through her eyes, "Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person".
   The other value of the book lay in her exploration of basic life concepts, such as Love, Friendship, Religion and Race. I always enjoy the experience of getting as close as possible to looking at things through someone else's eyes, an opportunity afforded here as Hurston shares her opinions.
   Finally, I would give this 4 stars, not 5, but for some reason, star-rating is fixed at 5 for this book...



2. As with any of her works, Zora being who she was has to weave in folklore, anthropology, history, and some of everything into her work. Her autbiography is no exception. She is truly one of the most poetic and artistic authors of all times. She knows how to play with words and phrases that keep you hooked; not necessarily for the content but because you are waiting to see what funny or thought-provoking thing she will say next.
   
   The only reason I had to rate this work four stars is because of a couple of inaccuracies. She claims to have been born in Eatonville, FL for one thing. This is not true according to U.S Census records. She also takes years off of her age, but never explicitly tells when she was born. Other than that, this is one of the most interesting autobiographies that you will ever read. Also one of the most inspiring.



3. I found the memoir of this icon of a Renaissance woman to be very exciting and enlightening. Hurston's revealing portrait was a curious blend of anecdote, memory, and observation. I agree to some degree with other critics who question the truth and authenticity of the story as autobiography. At times it does seem a little out of sequence and jumbled. However, it is a precious collection of material (memory, folklore, dreams, anthropology, legend, etc.) out a key era in the history of African Americans. It is very informative and regardless of its shortcomings and the questions it may leave unanswered, at the same time, it does allow us a peek into the life and psyche of a deep, delightful and brilliant woman who was certainly before her time. It is our good fortune that she was able to set down this account of her experience, which has been preserved for us to share. Hurston was obviously somewhat of a free thinker as well as a scholar and I wonder if she could have told her story any way other than the way she did, although she has been criticized for it. It is the account of a particular Black woman who had a very unusual life for the time that she lived in. I would also add that given the alternative material related to the book which has been uncovered since the initial publishing it has to be taken into account that the book was likely censored, which would color the whole picture in ways the author may not have originally intended. But I was greatly affected, inspired and informed by the book and would recommend and encourage any Hurston enthusiast to read it.



4. This is a highly compromised book. Critics are all over the board on what on earth motivated blatant lies that she told about her life, and the sugar-coating of the realities of the black experience, in america, before civil rights.
   
   I would personally say, that this is a very unfortunate piece. I would give it three stars for its entertainment value.
   
   Zora Neale Hurston was born in 1891, in Alabama, about 10 years before she claims, in ''dust tracks.'' She was not born in Florida.
   
   She essentially falsifies her identity; she shares experiences from about 1900 - 1940, lived by a person who is actually 10 years older than she claims to have been!
   
   College would look like a very different place if you experienced it at 32, than if you were to go through it at 22.
   
   I recommend this work, only if you read it with a current biography next to it.
   
   In hindsight, her presentation of her life and times, compared to our general understanding of her realities makes this work a very interesting historical document.



5. This autobiography focuses equally on her opinions (highly untraditional)and her life (also highly unorthodox) giving the reader an unashamed glance to peer into the deepest wells of her being.

4 comments about May Week Was in June: Unreliable Memoirs Continued (Transaction Large Print Books).

1. This looks like being the last personal memoir Clive James intends to let us have. After he left Cambridge he became well-known from the media, first as BBC film critic, then as the television critic of The Observer on Sundays, and latterly with several shows of his own. He must be nearer 70 than 60 by now, to the best of my knowledge his marriage has survived, and the combination of anno domini, stability and exposure has probably left him with nothing much more that he feels driven to tell us.
   
   His Cambridge career must have given the university more of a challenge in dealing with him than the other way about. He read voraciously, but he read what interested him rather than what was on the syllabus. He devoted much of his time and energy to theatrical productions, and much of his time if not energy to watching films. To what extent he found the Cambridge experience formative I can't really tell, but it clearly didn't take him over. He mentions a number of personalities - F R Leavis who clearly angered him, Germaine Greer thinly disguised as Romaine Rand, and a few others such as the college dean who come across to me as institutions at least as much as they do as personalities. Of the institutions properly so called he has a bit to say about the Union Society, which was clearly as imbecilic a tabernacle of triviality as its Oxford equivalent that I knew only a little earlier. Other institutions were the regular theatrical events, and here we get a genuine sense of involvement. Cambridge gave him a forum here where he could develop his talent. It might have developed less if he had never gone there, but in any case he carried on with his theatre productions in London at the same time, so I'd guess Cambridge's real gift to him was the student grant that unintentionally left him free to do substantially what he liked.
   
   How reliable or unreliable these memoirs are I have to guess too, but I should think they can be believed a lot more than those of, say, Berlioz. Every newspaper review of this book since it appeared in 1990 must have pointed out that his or anyone's team on University Challenge consisted of four members and not three, and I wonder how this ever got past the proof-readers. Those of his contemporaries that he deigns to mention by name are mainly unknown to me, but some may be pseudonyms like Romaine Rand. As the book continued I started to recognise more names. These by and large are people he can mention without compromising or embarrassing them, so it's fair to suppose that some of the unknown personae are aliases to avoid problems. The story reads convincingly, and of course it reads very well. A child of that time attending a similar place of education can relate easily to his progressive disgust with the bogusness and herd-mentality of the 'intellectual' political left that drove us from any naïve revolutionary ideas back into being staid social democrats. The story of the attempt by one theatrical beauty to seduce him, in which he failed the test, is hilarious, but rather near the bone as well for someone whose occasional specialisation in such cases was just to abandon the scene or even to fail to recognise it as a scene in the first place. As for reading what one wanted to rather than what one was supposed to, scrambling through the syllabus and finishing with a better degree than one deserved - well, that rings a few bells too.
   
   Those who know either or both of the earlier books of memoirs, or who simply know Clive James from The Observer and/or television, will know the style to expect here. It's individual, and in its way it's brilliant as well. It has 'matured' rather by this third volume - the one-liners are not so conspicuous as before, but there are plenty left and the writing has more evenness and homogeneity. He traces his developing interest in artistic and intellectual creation of various kinds, and the wide-eyed ingenu quality of his appreciation is one of the things I like best about him. The last chapter, in which he hears, as we must, the clock ticking more loudly as he continues to look into the door opening ahead of him is really striking and affecting. I sense that Clive James has said most of what he was given to say, but how well he said it all.



2. This third volume of unreliable memoirs picks up where the previous volume (Falling Towards England) let off. James, in these books, is interesting, yet not as funny, at least to me, as it seems the things he is describing should be. I definitely need to give his fiction a try.

   The nice thing about reading a writer's biography like this is to realize that you are not alone. It is much too easy for me to think that I am the only one with trouble concentrating on the matter at hand instead of flirting with one passion after the other.




3. I love Clive James' writing - especially his wry style of combining haughty superciliousness with biting self-deprecation, often within the space of one line. He writes like he speaks, with a verbose sarcasm, and throughout reading May Week Was In June it's almost impossible not to hear his nasal, scoffing tones narrating the book for you.
   And while this third (and final?) instalment in his autobiographical memoirs (following the hugely funny Unreliable Memoirs and equally hilarious Falling Towards England) contains the familiar elements of James' comedic style, it doesn't quite measure up to its two predecessors.
   Unreliable Memoirs, where James told of his childhood days in post-war suburban Sydney, didn't have to exert any effort whatsoever to raise a laugh: James' skewed take on his youthful surroundings in Kogarah coupled perfectly with the countless moments of hilarity he lived through and strange and twisted acquaintances he made. In the same vein, Falling Towards England introduced us to a young man desperately out of his depth as a newcomer to the Mother Country, armed only with an ill-fitting suit and cardboard suitcase.
   May Week Was In June is a continuation of James' days in Britain, as a late twentysomething attempting to forge an acting career in Cambridge while simultaneously stumbling clumsily through his English degree. Even though he's older he's still no wiser, being cursed with an overly healthy interest in women, a not-so-healthy interest in pints of ale and frustrating his teachers and himself by forgoing his assigned texts in their entirety to read countless books of his own choosing.
   Yes, it's funny, and it certainly continues to reinforce James' portrayal of his younger self as more larrikin than laureate and more clown than Casanova. He's still a fish out of water, despite having immersed himself for many years in British culture, and his distinctly Australian outlook stands out in 1960s Cambridge like a sore thumb.
   The funny moments, though, don't tend to come as thick and fast as in the first two memoirs. This was a shame, as episodes such as James practising his twist in his darkened bedroom in Swiss Cottage, and his teenage sex education in the back of a Kogarah garage, were what made the first two books so laugh-out-loud funny. James has grown up in his third boo, and is a slightly more serious and focused character (with the emphasis on slightly, though!), despite his shortcomings as a student and his scorn for conservative behaviour. However, the narration is still flawless in its eloquency and James proves he has not lost his sharp and unique way of observing the world around him with a cynicism that never grates, but constantly entertains.



4. Having so much enjoyed the first two volumnes in this series, I was not prepared for this turgid list of self improvement. Yes Clive is well read, English and Italian, yes he does know the difference between a Donatello and a Michelangelo, but do we need to know every book he read in the two years, every painting he saw and how it moved him. The simple answer is no. Unfortunately it takes 250 pages to find out. The story of how a drunken extemely funny youth becomes a sober mildly funny old pseud.

4 comments about A Mother's Story (G K Hall Large Print Book Series).

1. Gloria Vanderbilt's novel isn't about Gloria, it's about Suicide and the aftermath of depression and grief. Even in the ever increasing, unwanted clique of suicide survivors, it's still fairly rare for those who have actually witnessed the suicide of our dearly loved ones to find help for our special sorrow. Suicide of a loved one is hard enough to deal with, but there's a distinctive anguish that must be dealt with when such a disturbing, shocking, and painful life-taking event is witnessed.
   
   Such an event separates us from the rest of society in an uncomfortable and agonizing way, and no one could have been more separated from her feelings than the last American Debutante: Gloria Vanderbilt. Raised to be a "lady", to never show strong emotions, to remain in control at all times, Gloria experienced many shattering events, but her "glass bubble" broke when her son committed suicide before her very eyes. Gloria had to break her glass bubble in order to survive, to deal with the overpowering emotion exclusive to survivors of suicide, and she poignantly shares her journey in this heartrending account of her son's life and death. Breaking her "bubble" was a gutsy act, one that perhaps you are facing now. I found strength in her words, and courageousness in her willingness to share her unique pain. Her story is about celebrating her son's life and accomplishments, remembering him as he was before his illness overtook his life, and about her courage to "break the glass bubble" and share her deep, heartfelt emotion and pain in order to help others in spite of her upbringing, which encouraged a lady to bottle up feelings.
   
   The stigma attached to suicide, and even those who are left behind, is often crippling. None felt this stigma more than a woman in constant "limelight", a woman of "old money" forced into a strict code of ethics that forbade public displays of emotion, or public displays of weakness. Uneducated people see suicide as a weakness, and apply this not just to the originator but to his/her family in his/her wake.
   
   I highly recommend this book for survivors of suicide. If you're looking for courage in this time of great need, please pick up a copy of this book. Also, do a google search for 'suicide survivors', and call your local Crisis Hotline for survivors groups in your area or phone numbers to call. You're not alone. There are groups of real people out there who share your unique pain, please contact them.



2. I read this book before I read her husband Wyatt Cooper's book, which was written decades before Gloria's book. I was confused to find that almost every single one of Gloria's 'memories' of her sons, mostly centering around Carter, obviously, were almost word for word taken from Wyatt Cooper's novel. This makes her book, titled A Mother's Story, so much more sad for me---does Gloria not have any memories about her sons that are her own?
   
   Aside from that, she spends quite A LOT of the book basically doing the poor little rich girl routine. I'm sure she's had pain in her life, but everyone has! She goes on and on about how she's locked in a bubble and can't feel any real love, everyone that she's ever tried loving is taken from her, etc, etc, etc.
   
   The book is really choppy; short passages taken from her diary, lifted memories, and she jumps back and forth to her son, Carter's suicide. After she describes the suicide she spends the rest of the book going on about how she had to see her surriviving son, Anderson, right in life and then she could be with Wyatt and Carter again. Very melodramtic, but it makes my heart break for Anderson--she quite obviously would rather be 'in heaven with Daddy and Carter' than paying attention to the son she still has.
   
   The only reason I gave this book two stars instead of one is because it is a mercifully quick read.



3. Gloria Vanderbilt describes herself as living from earliest childhood in an "unbreakable glass bubble," a sense of being isolated from people because she was unlovable and unworthy, unable to feel deep emotions. Though she knew happiness for the first time with her fourth husband Wyatt Cooper and her sons, she still felt tinges of being cut off from reality. Her husband's death started to crack the unbreakable bubble surrounding her soul, and it shattered completely and forever when she witnessed her son Carter commit suicide, when he was 23.
   
   She then was able to feel the deepest pain and guilt, and to acknowledge the boundless joy he had brought to her. She writes in a disjointed manner, flashing back and forth with journal entries and short reflections about events in her life leading up to Carter's death, which she describes in acute detail. Her musings are written to herself and to Carter, except for one chapter in which she reaches out to readers who are dealing with loss; she never imagined she could survive after her son's death, but she did, and given enough time, others will, too.
   
   This little book is short enough, and compelling enough, to read in one sitting. Her reflections are deeply personal, and yet universally understood.
   
   Kona



4. This book is an unexpected jewel that was given to me by a friend during a time in my life where I was struggling with myself and my path in life. Everyone can associate with the events and emotions conveyed in this touching account of a mother losing her son. Honest, personal, and moving, the author invites us into a sacred place and shares her tragedy with the world with loving care. At times I felt embarassed, as if I were trespassing into a private and personal memory. It is more than a book about loss and heart ache, it is a book about life.

5 comments about Shoeless: The Life and Times of Joe Jackson.

1. David Fleitz has captured in a snapshot the essence of the life of Joe Jackson. He was born in rural South Carolina in the late 19th Century and died in 1951 in his home state.
   Shoeless Joe Jackson, has since become the precursor to the modern baseball slugger. His batting stance was copied by the ultimate baseball slugger, that being Babe Ruth. Mr. Jackson's batting skills in Cleveland and Chicago are legendary. He really was the first hitter to take a full cut at the ball. His batting prow ness was not out of the small ball era.
   Mr. Fleitz goes into great detail about Shoeless Joe's career. After reading this thorough dissertation, I feel that Mr. Jackson belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was a good man who probably deserved better. Like the tragedy of Pete Rose it probably will not happen. However I hope in the great wisdom of the "Old Timers Committee" they will see that Joe Jackson belongs in the hallowed chambers at Cooperstown.
   This book was well written and very readable. If you love the history of baseball, you'll love this book



2. Fleitz does a fine job of describing the atmosphere of the early days of baseball and is usually objective in his treatment of Jackson as a player and as a person. I recommend the book for anyone who is a Jackson affectionado and/or enjoys human drama in a sports context. However, I was very disappointed in the final pages where Fleitz offers his opinion that Jackson wouldn't have cared about the Hall of Fame anyway because he was basically a Southern, good old boy from a poor background who cared only about hanging out with friends and family near the old homeplace. My great uncle worked in those same Greenville, SC cotton mills as a 9-yr old boy for almost no wages but ambition did not die there among the textile looms.



3. There has been a lot said and written about Joe Jackson by a variety of people - baseball people, baseball historians, scholars of the 1919 World Series, residents of the South (particularly South Carolina), and others. There's also been a variety of books produced about Jackson, most with his point of view or the "point of view he would have had," whatever that might have been at any point in time. It was with some skepticism that I picked up Fleitz's book and started to read, half expecting to see the same arguments that I've read before - Jackson as a victim, as the greatest player not in the Hall of Fame but for one mistake, and how he went back to South Carolina and scratched out a living (or was very successful, depending on which book you read).

   Fleitz's book was a most pleasant surprise - it offers information that I haven't found anywhere else, and gives more "flesh" and substance to the person that was Joe Jackson than any previous account of his life that I had read. One point is the relationship that he had with his wife: always shown as the doting couple, Fleitz writes that this wasn't always the case. In baseball, he shows that Jackson wasn't the near-mythological player that he had been portrayed, and that he did fail at any number of clutch situations. By the same token, Jackson is also frequently mentioned as a batting role model to any number of famous players. The reactions of contemporaries thoughtout the book is also delightful feature.

   A primary focus of the book is in the 1919 World Series and Jackson's role in that. Through the years Jackson has garnered significant numbers of supporters claiming that he was innocent; Fleitz offers evidence and opinions that he may not have been that innocent at all. There is also the issue of his initial acceptance of the gamblers' money. As with many people, I have my opinions of the World Series fix and Jackson's involvement. Prior to Fleitz's book, the opinion was a little fuzzier; after reading the book, it's become a little clearer. Was he innocent or guilty? Read the book and make your decision - it's well worth your time.




4. Great book. Separates the myth and the legend of Shoeless Joe Jackson from the "average Joe" and looks at his banishment from baseball in an honest, objective light. Author does an outstanding job of dissecting Jackson's behavior and possible motives throughout the scandal of the 1919 Black Sox.
   But more importantly, more personal information about Joe is available on Joe throughout the pages of this text than any I have ever seen. This is a fantastic accomplishment as there is a lot of sappy, sentimental fluff out there about Joe Jackson and this book really made me feel as though I knew Joe, in addition to understanding what he was about.
   This book is by far and away the best baseball book of the year (along with Reed Browning's Cy Young) and is amongst the best and most important baseball books ever written. If you're a serious baseball fan, you will enjoy SHOELESS!!



5. Baseball biographies come in all types, from boring descriptions of the player's performance in games, to tantalizing disconnected details of the player's life outside the lines, to full-fledged development of the player's life history and personality. This new book by David Fleitz falls more toward the latter. I recommend it to all baseball fans, especially ones (like me) who are fascinated by the lesser-known stars of the pre-Ruthian world.

   Much of the book is devoted to Jackson's role in the Black Sox scandal, putting it into historical context and digging into the actions and motives of some of the key figures. The passages involving Charles Comiskey are especially revealing.

   The road between city life and country life was much longer back then. Early baseball has many stories of the difficulties rural men faced when thrust into MLB's urban landscape. Because of his great physical skills, the illiterate Jackson is a highly compelling example of these stories. I now feel like I've met Jackson. Among the best baseball biographies I've read.

3 comments about Dear Dodie.

1. Valerie Grove has written a supremely readable life of Dodie Smith. Recommended for anyone literate, and essential for Dalmatian owners (Smith wrote "The Hundred and One Dalmatians" and loved the breed).



2. Perhaps I should have let dear Dodie remain a bit of a mystery. Ms. Grove's portrayal is anything but flattering - and seems just plain mean at times. For those of us who have loved Cassandra Mortmain, perhaps it's best just to continue reading (and re-reading) The Town In Bloom, It Ends with Revelations, A Tale of Two Families, and hope one day to latch on to one of the many volumes of her autobiography. Stick with the source to continue appreciating her true voice!



3. Having come across Smith's utterly charming book,' I Capture the Castle', last year (see my review under that title!) and quickly reading everything I could get my hands on by this remarkable woman, I was curious as to how much of her fiction was thinly disguised autobiography. Grove's carefully researched bio., culled from literally thousands of pages of journals, scrapbooks, letters and Smith's own 4 volumes of autobiography answers that question (quite a bit, actually!) and provides a close-up view of not only Smith and her eccentric friends and family, but also a detailed portrait of an exciting time and place. Grove, for example, tells about Smith's own theatrical ambitions as an actress, her experieinces with various troupes in the 20's and '30's and how they led her to write about provincial theatre in 'It Ends With Revelations" and "The Town in Bloom". If you are a fan of Smith's fiction (and who among those of us who have read her is not!), I think you will find she is equally good company through this enlightening book.

No comments about World Elsewhere: The Autobiography of a Well-Known British Character Actor (Isis (Hardcover Large Print)).

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5 comments about The Place He Made.

1. Even though this book is out of print, you should own a copy, it is so emotional and heartwarming, after I read this book about Edie and her husband and the experiences she went through with him, I had to write her a email and tell her about how well I enjoyed this book, she wrote me back with a response and said she was working on a new book, this was a year or so ago and I am still waiting. I can't wait. I hope her new book is as great as this one.



2. I had no idea what this story would be about when I picked it up, but once I started reading I knew I wasn't going to be able to put it down. I read it in a day, and couldn't believe how profound this story was. By the time I was finished, I wanted to hold my husband and not let him go. In a world where we all tend to focus on big homes, big cars, big jobs, big money, etc., the simple thread that wove through this wonderful story was the simple love that Edie found with Paul. Paul may have been a simple man, but I wonder how many of us in our lifetimes ever feel the true love and tenderness that they shared. This is a story that I will always remember. I truly hope I precede Edie to heaven so I can witness their reunion.



3. I have never before felt the urge to write to an author to tell her how much I enjoyed her beautifully written book. I was touched very much by this story and highly recommend it.



4. Not knowing the subject matter, I happened to buy this book while recovering from a bone marrow transplant. What should have been depressing instead was a gift of wonder and beauty at a time I needed it most. I can't find words to express how this book moved me. Edie Clark writes with an almost exacting clarity combined with extraordinary love and tenderness. Consider it a privilege to be allowed to share in the incredible story of Paul and Edie.



5. The love between Edie and Paul is one that we all should experience in our lifetime. I cried tonight as I finished the book, feeling the love and pain Edie and Paul shared and as death approached, I am certain Paul felt his life was complete, as he experienced true love, unconditionally. There are few books in my life that have such a profound effect on my being.

5 comments about Life of Charlotte Bronte (Charnwood Library).

1. While the definitive overall Brontes biography is Juliet Barker's 'The Brontes', and the various Bronte-related works of Edward Chitham are invaluable in their own right, this still stands as an important contribution to understanding the Brontes, and Charlotte above all.
   
   Despite its flaws, and I agree with other reviewers, that this is a rather dark picture of events, Elizabeth wrote a detailed and very sympathetic account of Charlotte's life and her relationship to her family. Her inclusion of letter content, epecially in relation to Ellen Nussey, was somewhat self-edited, and the lack of references to the romantic friendship that so clearly existed between the two women, was probably Elizabeth's attempt to protect them.
   
   For anyone who is interested in the truth of their passionate relationship, I highly recommend Elaine Miller's detailed essay 'Through All Changes and Through All Chances' from the book Not A Passing Phase, compiled by the Lesbian History Group. The letter excerpts that Elaine includes clearly indicate that Charlotte and Ellen not only loved each other, but that they jointly expressed a long-term desire to live together 'until Death'.
   
   When Ellen Nussey wanted to publish her own 'The Story of the Brontes' which would have included many excerpts from the hundreds of letters that Charlotte had sent her, Arthur Nicholls blocked permission, as he owned copyright to the contents of the letters, even though Ellen owned the letters themselves. Nicholls - Charlotte's husband of only nine months - also destroyed all of the literally hundreds of letters from Ellen to Charlotte, and even tried to insist that Ellen destroy all of Charlotte's letters to her, during Charlotte's lifetime.
   
   Elizabeth is clearly no fan of Nicholls, but that is hardly surprising in view of his destruction of so much of Charlotte's personal writing material.
   
   For an insight into the lives of Charlotte and her family and the Haworth area in that time period, this is still and always will be an important book.



2. Have tried to read Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bronte several times but found it so depressing that I couldn't get through the first chapters. I thought it would be easier on tape which, to some extent it is. However, the content is no less depressing and tragic. The family live at Howarth Parsonage, an isolated place in the north of England. There are six children, two of whom die from tuberculosis and consumption in their school years; the mother dies young;the brother dies of alcoholism and Emily and Ann both die in their 20s. The tragedy is that of extraordinary talent snuffed out so early in life.
   The majority of the book is taken up with the the lonely life of Charlotte and her selfish father, which, try as she might, Elizabeth Gaskell cannot make interesting. Charlotte's trips outside the confines of Howarth are few and far between but one very rarely hears her complain. She finally has a few years of married life before she too dies young. I have alway loved reading the Bronte sisters novels - this autobiography shows to what extent these girls live in their imagination and how rich those imaginations are. Being so isolated from society, reveals why their novels are so dark and and sinister - herein lies a book, but Elizabeth Gaskell is no psychoanalyst. A great friend and admirer of Charlotte Bronte, she prefers to emphasize her virtues and forebearance in the face of adversity and gives us little more than a hagiography of her friend. There is very little analysis, if any, of Charlotte's works; thankfully, later scholarship delves more deeply into the intricate minds of Charlotte, and her two sisters.
   Being from the North of England myself, I would have perhaps felt more "connected" if the narrator had been English. Elizabeth Gaskell was from Manchester, England, and to hear Flo Gibson (as good a narrator as she might be otherwise) trying to get across the English northern accent was quite painful.
   I would not recommend this work, especially if one is looking for any kind of critical analysis of Jane Eyre, Shirley or Villette.



3. Mrs. Gaskell understood a man's or woman's life to be lived within a social and natural context -- and her deployment of anecdotes and impressions of the North of England in the early pages of this book is captivating. But she also understood us to be souls, present to but distinct from God. Hence, even though in a few instances Gaskell's facts may been correctible (which the editor has done for us in this Penguin Classics edition), she is concerned with truth, and this gives readers the opportunity (rarely offered by modern entertainments) to escape from the trivial.



4. A very nicely written biography by Mrs. Gaskell about the life of her friend Charlotte Bronte, although most of the content was made up of letters written either by or to Charlotte Bronte rather than Mrs. Gaskell's own writings. Still this is a very concise book containing mostly everything that an ordinary reader, or well, a beginner of the Bronte novels, should know about this famous family. Nonetheless at some point of the book, I do find Mrs. Gaskell a bit too subjective, especially when it comes to the depiction of Charlotte's brother Branwell Bronte and his downfall. But consider the fact that this book was written only within one and a half year, with Mrs. Gaskell herself alone traveling all the way from Manchester to Haworth, and then to Brussel, doing all the necessary researches and interviews on her own, I must say that this is just an awesome piece of work!! And just as what Patrick Bronte himself had said about this biography, 'It is every way worthy of what one Great Woman, should have written of Another...it ought to stand, and will stand in the first rank, of Biographies, till the end of time'.

   One more word though. From a more scholarly point of view, however, I think so far the 'best' biography on the Brontes should be Juliet Barker's 'The Brontes'. If, after reading this biography written by Mrs. Gaskell, you still want to know more about the Brontes, then I will say: go and buy this other book by Juliet Barker and you definitely will never regret it!




5. Such sad lives were led by the the Bronte's, loneliness, loss, despair, all were experienced and fed into the imaginations on charlotte, emily and anne. This book is a brilliant book by E C Gaskell (who i normally dont really like), it is basically a collection of letters by charlotte and a great narrative, when speaking of the deaths of emily, anne and charlotte, i actually felt tears in my eyes!

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