BODY PARTS:ESSAYS ON LIFE WRITING

Hermione Lee - Pimlico - NZ$39.99

Reviewed by Gordon McLauchlan.

Anyone interested in the art of biography will get a buzz from Hermione Lee’s Body Parts, subtitled “Essays on Life-Writing” (published by Pimlico). Her own work on Virginia Woolf, Philip Roth, Willa Cather and, most recently, Edith Wharton is well known and admired.

What Body Parts reveals is the extraordinary depth of her reading of other biographers. What captivated me most was the chapter called “Jane Austen Faints” in which she explains how effectively Austen’s family attempted to control her posthumous reputation, and how two different biographers -- Claire Tomalin and David Nokes -- constructed very different personalities from basically the same information.
Lee is steeped in the business of biography. She has honed her craft by reading various versions of the lives of a number of writers, and applying an analytical intelligence to the way each biographer has treated the material available. And it is brightly written as well.

FOOTNOTE:

Hermione Lee will be appearing at the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival 14-18 May, 2008.