Reviews

Out of the Sky She Came: The Life of P.L. Travers, Creator of Mary Poppins by Valerie Lawson

gabmc's review against another edition

3.0

I enjoyed getting to know the little known author behind the Mary Poppins stories. Thanks to the movie 'Saving Mr Banks', I did know that PL Travers was Australian. She wrote magazine articles and acted while in Australia but it wasn't until she moved to England that she wrote the first Mary Poppins book. I liked how Valerie Lawson used the motif of all the 'Mr Banks' figures in Travers' life to talk about the many male influences on the author, starting with her father who died when she was only seven years old. I also liked how Lawson told Travers' life story in the three stages of maiden, mother, crone - as this would have resonated with Travers. The Mary Poppins stories were a series of books of short stories, written between 1934 and 1989. Travers was taken with Irish mythology -possibly due to her father's Irish heritage - and lived in Dublin for a time, mixing with many famous Irish authors of the 1920s. Travers, like the story Mary Poppins, wasn't a particularly likeable character. She lived to 96, dying in England. I think she only returned to Australia once since she left at age 20.

jennifermreads's review against another edition

I picked up this book after I saw Disney's Saving Mr. Banks. The movie was wonderful but I knew that the relationship between Walt Disney and P.L. Travers was not as rosy as it was painted in the film. Besides, the book is always better, right??

Not this time. I just could not finish this book. I tried ... desperately tried ... for over six weeks. I'd pick it up, I'd put it down, I'd pick it up again, and, now at the halfway point, it is down for good.

My biggest gripe is that I got the life details of every human being who entered Travers' circle and had an impact on her life. I get that I need to know a person in order to understand the influence said person has on the star of the book but, egads, I just didn't care to know so much about AE and Gurdjieff. Sadly, I could not even make it to the chapter (was it a chapter? or more?) about Walt Disney. I tried to skip ahead and just read that bit ... even that wore me out after a page. I'm done.