I'll admit I'd never heard of Angela Carter before the review of this book appeared in NYRB, and Carter's style of novels really doesn't appeal to me, but this is the best biography of a writer I've read in a long time. Edmund Gordon manages to make Carter come alive, although she has been dead for 25 years. Making a biography subject come alive does not sound like a remarkable accomplishment, but it really is, and in this case it also does justice to Carter's appetite for life. We get a good idea of her friendships, loves, writing habits, jobs, and of course books. The writing is a pleasure to read. I got interested in the book when the NYRB review mentioned how Carter at first wrote to escape her stifling home environment, but this is only a small part of her life, and there is a lot more to her life than that early chapter of her life, which she closed when she married her first husband. (That marriage did not last. When she finally settled down, her second marriage - to a man 18 years her junior - was much happier.) She was a bit an adventurer - she travelled alone to Japan and Russia - and I loved the parts where she went to the U.S. to teach at Brown University, the Iowa Writers' Workshop and UT Austin (she did not think very highly of those students, but worked very hard to help them improve.) It is so fascinating to read about her perception of the U.S. in the 1980s. My only minor comment is that I wish the author had accompanied his figures in British pounds (when he says how much Carter was paid as an advance on this or that book) with their equivalent in US dollars. But this is really nitpicking. This is a exceptional book which deserves to be widely disseminated and shortlisted for many literary awards.
You can read an essay by Gordon about the book here, and a review in the New Yorker here.
Comments