After Lives

December 15, 2024
Enmeshed in lives. Marshall, biographer of Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Bishop, and the sisters Sophia, Elizabeth, and Mary Peabody, melds biography and memoir in six essays that offer intimate reflections on her life and work. Creating what she calls "a cultural history of the self," Marshall recalls her taciturn grandfather; a 17-year-old classmate killed when he tried to free his brother from prison; a lonely three-month fellowship she spent in Kyoto; and the death of her partner. Although she has specialized "in lesser-known female intellectuals," her interest in other lives was piqued by her discovery of letters that her grandfather wrote home when he and his wife were newlyweds in France during World War I. In those letters, Marshall encountered a far different man from the one she had known growing up. Filled with anticipation and adventure, determined to help France in the war effort, he learned French, became a press officer for the Army, and, when the war ended, was offered an enticing job as a "publicity man" for the League of Red Cross Societies. But the couple, now with an infant and weary of war-torn Europe, decided to return home. He spent his life as an insurance salesman. Her mother, too, was forced to circumscribe her dreams. Marriage to a mentally unstable husband derailed her plans to become an artist: She had to work to support the family, and her easel, Marshall recalls, "stayed folded up in the garage." Marshall writes of her empathy for Sophia Peabody, a talented artist, denied training and opportunities because of the sexism of the time. Writing the biography of Sophia and her sisters--a project that took 20 years--and the books on Fuller and Bishop sometimes, Marshall admits, "felt like self-exploration." Candid, sensitive recollections.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 1, 2025
Celebrated biographer Marshall devoted decades to the lives of the Peabody sisters, Margaret Fuller, and Elizabeth Bishop, researching and writing with skill, innovation, and an abiding mission to illuminate women's lives. She now considers her own experiences in fluent and involving essays. Marshall ponders individuals who continue to call to her, including Una, the troubled firstborn child of Nathaniel and Sophia Peabody Hawthorne. She delves into her high-school years in racially discriminatory Pasadena, and remembers an activist classmate, Jonathan Jackson, who was killed during a daring effort to free his incarcerated older brother, George, one of the Soledad Brothers, in the case that embroiled Angela Davis. An old ice pick inspires an inquiry into an obsolete industry, her father's mental illness, and her artist mother's sacrifices. She looks back at an autumn in Kyoto, the loss of her partner, and the isolation of COVID-19. Throughout, Marshall nimbly extrapolates significant implications from small moments, humble objects, and quiet discoveries as she astutely and gracefully records a "season of introspection," ending with a stirring and promising account of how she found herself ""practicing biography again.

COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 14, 2025

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Marshall (Margaret Fuller; The Peabody Sisters) offers a memoir in essays, reflecting on how writing about others has changed how she sees her own experiences, relationships, and history. The six essays cover a wide range of topics, including Marshall's thoughts on viewing the remains of Sophia Peabody Hawthorne (wife of Nathaniel) and their daughter Una; the three months that she spent living and studying in Kyoto; and her account of Jonathan Jackson, a 17-year-old classmate who was killed in a headline-making shootout in 1970. Throughout these essays, Marshall uses her biographer's tools--interviewing witnesses, examining documents, checking memories against facts, and contending with separation from one's subjects. What is gleaned from the assembled leavings is a form of truth, getting to a person's core--in this case, the core of Marshall herself. The author's completed narrative is intriguing and unexpected, peppered with insights, and full of meaning. VERDICT An introspective examination of the biographer's craft that interrogates how a Marshall's vocation has shaped her memories of the past. A writer's memoir for those who enjoyed Colm T�ib�n's A Guest at the Feast.--Brian Renvall

Copyright 2025 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.