Susan cheever author biography samples
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When a friend told me she was reading Susan Cheever's book American Bloomsbury about Emerson and his circle in Concord, I was intrigued, because I'd read Cheever's memoir about her father years ago and had lost track of her career after that.
I went to Amazon, but was drawn to Cheever's biography of Louisa May Alcott instead. I didn't know much about Alcott and I'm a huge fan of biographies (I have hundreds in my study). The book grabbed me based on the sample: Alcott didn't want to write Little Women -- her editor pushed her to.
What a great hook.
When the book arrived, though, I gradually discovered it was awful. I hadn't bothered reading the thoughtful critiques on Amazon -- I learned its varied faults myself (reviews of American Bloomsbury are even more scathing, btw, and more numerous).
Cheever's assessment of Alcott is marred by trivialities. You learn things like this: Alcott dropped a pie box in Boston. Not only that, it tipped "end over end." Wow. Alcott was teased by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. about her height, and in Boston she had hyacinths in a window box. None of these details (and more just as inane) add to an understanding of Alcott's life or writing.
Cheever's prose can be gag-worthy: "Death is a mystery, but life is filled with light
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Susan Cheever has offered the latest in a flurry of books about Louisa May Alcott; hers is titled Louisa May Alcott A Personal Biography. In a little over 250 pages, she sketches out the life of the popular author of Little Women. Cheever’s book is an easy read, with a writing style that is very accessible. The preface immediately captured me as she shared her personal connection with Alcott (thus the subtitle, “A Personal Biography”). I only wish that the book had lived up to the preface (and the epilogue as well) for I actually didn’t find all that much that was “personal” about it.
As a disclaimer, I have to say that I read this book in a way that most would probably not as I am very involved in reading about Louisa May Alcott for this blog: I took notes as I read. That plus reading several primary sources mentioned in Cheever’s bibliography made this a 3 month-long journey. Like I said, a little unusual!
My feelings about this book are decidedly mixed. On the one hand, I very much enjoyed the back drop of history that Cheever presented throughout the book and did not find it a distraction as has been mentioned in other reviews. As an example, her comments about the Civil War helped put into context Louisa’s experie