A life of one's own Nine women writers begin again

In this finely tuned blend of memoir, literary criticism, and biography, Biggs (All Day Long), an editor at Harper's Magazine, finds inspiration in the lives and work of eight women writers (the author is the ninth in the subtitle). She recounts how, in her 30s, she felt unmoored by her faltering marriage and her mother's Alzheimer's diagnosis, prompting her to reconsider her life and turn to books by women who questioned societal expectations of love, autonomy, and creative expression. During the dissolution of Biggs's marriage, she gravitated toward Mary Wollstonecraft, whose decision to buck social norms and spend most of her life happily unmarried reminded Biggs "to listen to my feelings, even if they scared or embarrassed me." She also takes heart from the example of George Eliot, who found love and literary success in midlife after romantic disappointment and the death of her parents, as well as from Janie Crawford, the protagonist of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, who refused to settle for a lackluster relationship. The sharp analysis and biographical sketches testify to how literature has long served as a site of reinvention for women: "The ultimate freedom might be to take the wreckage of your life and write your own story with it." Book lovers will swoon over this smart meditation on life and writing. (May)

Biggs wonders how to begin again after divorce, turning for advice to the women writers who kept her company through processing her new freedom. In this mixture of memoir and literary criticism, featuring moments in the lives of writers who thrived in moments of transition, the author begins with a series of rapid-fire questions, clearly seeking urgent answers. To find them, she begins exploring the ways in which the women writers she has felt kinship with have had to start over in their own lives as well as how their work during those transitions continues to help readers through their own rebirths. Biggs delves into the experiences of Mary Wollstonecraft, George Eliot, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison, and Elena Ferrante. Biggs excels at tying the lives and the works of these women together, showing how Eliot was influenced by Wollstonecraft, Woolf by Eliot, and so forth. As a result, the author creates a powerful collective portrait of women writers who are often only studied via their isolated exceptionalism. "Women might draw benefit from thinking of themselves as being involved in a long conversation," writes Biggs, "in which they both listen and talk, and even manage in this way, over time, to establish a tradition." Naturally, the author is unable to find answers to all of her questions, but her journey did allow her to cultivate a sense of being free that doesn't require isolation but instead leans into community--sometimes with the women writers in this book, other times with various people in her daily life. Ultimately, though Biggs may not be sure of her success in beginning again, she is sure of her freedom and lucid in her assessments of how these nine authors helped her find it. An enlightening meditation on the intersections of art and freedom. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.