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lola425's review against another edition
4.0
An interesting study of a life, unremarkable, disappointing, yet still lived, still worthy of examination. Also a study of scholarship, why something grabs someone's imagination, the thrills and disappointments of discovery, the absolute sureness of your determinations that turn out to be both true and completely false.
richardpierce's review against another edition
3.0
Actually 3.5 stars. Very readable. Sobering, really, as it just emphasises how little time we have and how easily we can let our lives drift by. A must-read if the human condition is something you ponder on.
girgir81's review against another edition
5.0
I picked this book up from a book fair back in February of this year (along with at least a dozen more, you know how it’s like :p) and when I started reading it, I knew very little about it.
Frankly, initially, I thought the 148 discarded diaries belonged to more than one person and, in my typical fashion, I started to imagine scenarios as to how and why this happened.
Right from the very first few pages, I knew this book was different. It hooked me. It tickled my curiosity and made me unable to put it down. With the turn of every page came new pieces of information that slowly helped build that amazing story layer by layer.
The way Alexander Masters approached this biography was just genius! You read and read and feel like you’re not reading fast enough to get to the character reveal. You’re cheated and misguided along the way and keep expecting that you won’t get to the truth or that character, but… you do! And it’s climactic and fun and thrilling!
It was among the most fun books I’ve read in a very long time - not one dull moment honestly.
What I enjoyed most about this book is that it’s so human, so real and so relatable. We all think we process things differently and think and feel differently but we really don’t. Reading the innermost thoughts and feelings of that character made me realize we are all more alike than we think, though sometimes a little less neurotic than the character.
I never thought I would enjoy a biography but Masters turned me. I am now a fan and have since bought two of his other books “Stuart: a Life Backwards” and “Simon: the Genius in my Basement”. I look forward to reading and enjoying those as much as I enjoyed this book.
I will leave you with 2 quotes from the book that I really liked:
“To get away from the living is easy, but the dead follow you everywhere.”
“Her drama is that she is not fiction.”
Frankly, initially, I thought the 148 discarded diaries belonged to more than one person and, in my typical fashion, I started to imagine scenarios as to how and why this happened.
Right from the very first few pages, I knew this book was different. It hooked me. It tickled my curiosity and made me unable to put it down. With the turn of every page came new pieces of information that slowly helped build that amazing story layer by layer.
The way Alexander Masters approached this biography was just genius! You read and read and feel like you’re not reading fast enough to get to the character reveal. You’re cheated and misguided along the way and keep expecting that you won’t get to the truth or that character, but… you do! And it’s climactic and fun and thrilling!
It was among the most fun books I’ve read in a very long time - not one dull moment honestly.
What I enjoyed most about this book is that it’s so human, so real and so relatable. We all think we process things differently and think and feel differently but we really don’t. Reading the innermost thoughts and feelings of that character made me realize we are all more alike than we think, though sometimes a little less neurotic than the character.
I never thought I would enjoy a biography but Masters turned me. I am now a fan and have since bought two of his other books “Stuart: a Life Backwards” and “Simon: the Genius in my Basement”. I look forward to reading and enjoying those as much as I enjoyed this book.
I will leave you with 2 quotes from the book that I really liked:
“To get away from the living is easy, but the dead follow you everywhere.”
“Her drama is that she is not fiction.”
curlykew's review against another edition
The discovery of the diaries is intriguing, solving the mystery as to who authored the diaries felt engaging, but the format of the telling of these things just didn't work for me. I felt like I was reading an author's overworked notes before actually starting the first draft. I finally stopped bc I didn't even care who she was after a time.
ruthsomerset's review against another edition
5.0
A really interesting book and I couldn't put it down, in fact I finished it in one day!
deborahrosegreen's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
sad
fast-paced
4.0
As the biographer described the amount of time the diarist must have spent writing, I pitied her, but as the drawings were revealed I thought the diarist might have some kind of mental illness that made me wary of her. That was before it was revealed that she was drawing scenes from a play.
Then with the sudden plot twist that she was alive, I was captivated. I looked forward to hearing what she looked like, about her family and “hear” her voice. The reality was disappointing. Rather than describe her, the biographer lets us read her responses and they don’t sound anything like her diaries or like a normal person at all. If she was very real and imaginable, that would have been fine. If she was over the top and larger-than-life, I would have accepted it. But she was shallow, flat and boring. I would have been content to hear her described from the biographer’s point of view rather than shown to us.
But it's a really beautiful book with wonderfully written extracts of the diary woven in.
julia_may's review against another edition
4.0
I compulsively read it in one fell swoop and could not put it down. Made me think of Grey Gardens - a lot of similar themes here. Also those 7-Up documentary series. An anonymous diarist's 148 diaries find themselves in the hands of academics and subsequently their biographer friend, who then reads the diaries in an attempt to understand who the diarist was and also identify them. Because the diaries span several decades, you can trace the changes in the writer's life, dreams changing to disappointments, obsessive crushes turning to something darker, ambitions defeated. A few twists along the way make this a pretty compelling read and just when I thought I knew how it would end, turned out I was wrong. Like the characters in Grey Gardens, the diarist is not an altogether likeable personality, but eccentric and often relatable. There is an interesting discussion towards the end about the nature of happiness (or contentedness) being such that you often need to stop actively striving for it, to get it. Food for thought.
in2reading's review against another edition
3.0
I have very mixed feelings about this book. Through much of it I felt rather annoyed with the author and his thoughts about the writer of the diaries.
Spoiler
But after the diarist was identified and found alive, I admired her thoughts about her writing. And I was glad that the author recognized that many of his conjectures were not true. This book feels like a cautionary tale about ascribing meaning and motives to anyone, even with the possession of millions of their written words.reading_on_the_road's review against another edition
2.0
An intriguing concept, which didn't live up to its initial promise.