Finally, an audiobook I purchased with my own money (Libro.fm) and loved! I so enjoyed Jenn Shapland's narration. I felt akin to Shapland and Carson McCullers, and was not surprised that we all share a birthday month of February. If Carson were alive today, I'm sure she'd be on Lexapro like Jenn and me.

This book taught me so much I didn't know about this fantastic author, even though I have not read any McCullers yet. But that is something I most certainly will catch up with.
Especially dazzled about the relationship with the Swiss writer Schwarzenbach.

Jenn Shapland's structure of this book has been clever and pleasant to read.
Will look out for more.

In college, I also found some affinity with Carson McCullers, focusing on her novels for several research projects in classes. Something about her conveyance of being an outsider captured my young adult imagination. In this book, Jenn Shapland mixes biography and memoir, McCullers' story with her own. I found this book the be a brilliant exegesis of what it is to be a writer, a woman, a queer writer/woman. Shapland expertly interweaves McCullers' story with her own, exploring what her research on McCullers meant to her in that time of her life. I greatly enjoyed this book but most of all was moved by Shapland'd clear prose, thoughtful explorations, and the revelation of how personally we can know and not know people we've never met through archival research.

This book is about one of my favorite subjects--hidden queer history, and yet, it seemed to be somewhat surface. I was torn between wanting to love it and wanting a lot more from it. I am glad I read it, despite feeling like the writing was flighty.

Shepland has created a wonderful story about how McCullers life resonates with the author’s emotions. She makes connections between her own romantic attachment to women to what she read about in letters between McCullers and her female lovers. When I picked up the book, I was hesitant to believe that a book like this would be as fulfilling as the pre-publication advertising promoted. I was wrong. I found the emotional pull Shapland felt toward McCullers’s experiences honest. Shepland can write and she put her heart into this book. The research she did in preparing this book is thoughtful and complete.

Loved this book! I have a review forthcoming in print in Women's Review of Books. Thanks so much for the galley copy!

There were several distinct facets of this book. One is an interesting recounting of an author’s life and the writer’s process in discovering her life and work. I was particularly interested in her description of her work in the archive. Another facet was the writer’s solipsistic declarations about the nature of identity and love. There is no objectivity at all in this narrative, which makes it something other than a biography. There is too much about a person the writer has never met to make it a memoir. The result is something else entirely that does not feel like a new form. It feels like a painful straddle between the two that is awkward and jarring. Some of the prose could have used a more critical editorial eye.

I really loved this book. It’s a heartfelt and interesting exploration of the ways we interpret history, our own and others. It really gets one questioning whether it’s even possible to tell an accurate story about a person’s life based on “evidence” when there is so much that gets lost or intentionally omitted. I really connected with the author’s ambivalence toward the project of biography and the frustration with the tendency to fall back into a heteronormative narrative, even when it makes less sense to do so. The nonlinear approach was really interesting and I liked how the structure included sections that were quite short, but packed a punch. I also added so many things to my “to-read” list that I wouldn’t have found otherwise.
Would definitely recommend for people interested in literary memoirs and queer history

."..To tell her own story, a writer must make herself a character. To tell another person’s story, a writer must make that person some version of herself, must find a way to inhabit her... "

For the record I am not positively opinionated of all women writers, just as I am less positive of all male writers, positive in the sense that the writer is indeed talented, or great, or even has potential. But I do know what I like and in the first couple of paragraphs I can tell you Shapland has it going. I could care less that she is a lesbian, but it is obviously important to her and this work.

"...I think the cause rather a worthy one…"

Or her lesbianism perhaps important to who Shapland believes are her readers. But I am not a lesbian, well, not exactly, or maybe I am sometimes, but certainly not a lesbian reader. Nor am I a lesbian writer. And I have always tried, especially in my poetry, to be non-gendered, often wishing to be confused as one or another, and not really caring which one ultimately wins. I suppose however that if I were to be completely honest I am rooting for being considered a female writer even in light of my being male.

"...Outsiderness is a stance..."

But what gets me about these early Shapland paragraphs is the digression. Her personal anecdotes and personality presented for review. Shapland is betting on being likeable and interesting or else her book will fail. But she knows this going in. This adventure-in-study of hers presupposes to be a barn burner and her horse has left the pen.

"...In April 1958, she tells Mary in a letter that her writing comes to her from a place of instinct, rather than analysis, and that she only comprehends what she writes after it is finished…"

I can certainly relate to the above quotation as generally speaking I never comprehend what I am writing, or even why, until far into the process or sometimes near or at the end. For myself, I would not have it any other way. Surprises are entertaining, especially if they are meaningful. And even better if they are good.

"...she claims she never had a job she wasn’t fired from, “a perfect record.”"

My youngest son also claims to hold the same poor performance record, and being fired from every job is somewhat a badge of honor for him. Bob Dylan does him one better and claims he never even had a job. In contrast, I have never been fired from any job and have had more than I can remember. There were jobs in which I did wish to be fired but ultimately would eventually have to quit.

"...The feeling of kinship is common with beloved authors…"

There are many authors I do feel connected to and with. More so than even my family of origin. My best friends, probably my closest friends, are to a fault all virtual. Still, these so-called friends are quite real for me and I often seek counsel and camaraderie from them on the page. Shapland doesn’t yet feel like a friend to me, but that might be due to my not being made of good friend material.

"...Description can only expose so much of the self or contain so much of a memory or an experience. Photos and objects offer alternative access points to Carson’s history of identity formation and love...Clothes have always been a defining part of my life, a mode of expression that helps mediate, or exacerbate, a sense of unbelonging...I think lesbian style is much more nuanced than, “well, I’m not a traditional woman, so I’ll put on this menswear!” The problem, as I see it, is how little common language we have to communicate androgyny, ambiguity. We rely on binary terms terms, masculine vs. feminine, to convey what is at heart both, or neither..."

I am anticipating the time when sexual orientation will not matter to anyone, especially those who feel it does. What the closeted lesbian or gay person feels is really no different in my opinion than how I feel as an outsider everyday. I have never fit in. Anywhere. Fortunately I maintain a base camp in a town in which everyone, in some way or another, is a renegade. Our town rests at the edge of civilization, and wildness surrounds us and invades our paradise when we least expect it. Paradise is not only comforting but too often encourages a complacency enough to warrant a violent assault on our persons and property, and if ignored, eventually to our peril. As for personal style and costumes any individual might employ, I routinely wear camouflage sweatpants and army green t-shirts. So far removed from serving my country I nonetheless respect the uniform and have the deepest gratitude for those who did sacrifice something I was never in the moment or spirit myself to do. I wear my hair long, enough to be tied into a ponytail if desired, and proudly stand on my difference as if I were indifferent to what others might think of me. Of course, my stance is an act and myself a fraud of gargantuan proportions. But I am not sure if anyone really cares. And it is my wish that in time nobody will. An ancient gravestone I passed yesterday during a Bob-the-dog poop run alongside my trusty bicycle offered another opportunity to see an engraved name long dead and no longer remembered. A reminder of how unimportant our lives really are to the history of the world.

"...I relayed the details of my project to the poet...I told her that I was writing about Carson McCullers and her relationship with women...I was looking for clues. I was a sleuth. I was a huntress. I was hunting lesbians... "

I awoke this morning thinking about this book and bicycles. I had apparently dreamed of a community in which there were many lesbians. In my dream someone from this charming and robust small town (not my own) pointed out all the girls on bikes and added, “Notice that none of their bikes are equipped with kickstands.” Now I am not sure what that dream meant or why it entered my consciousness. It may have something to do with my aversion to the emphasis on sex and who we have it with. For example, I never see or hear Janis Joplin’s name, an unruly and unhappy lover of both men and women, a woman who had sex with whatever and whomever was available. She is for some reason no poster boy for the lesbian movement. And as much as Georgia O’Keeffe seems to be desired to be a member of that same club I understand she never identified herself as being lesbian either. She was simply a person who had a bit of sex with women and men, loved a few of them, and dismissed as many. She loved sunbathing in the nude and feeling free, most likely allowing an occasional sexual escapade. Making art was her main focus and she apparently was open to where that might lead. O’Keeffe was a feminist who also did not identify with that movement either. She was doggedly who she was and you could accept her or not. And that is where we all need to be. Those who care about who we have sex with or not do not matter. As far as I am concerned they are persona non grata.

"...But there’s a part of me. A defiant and somewhat juvenile part, that still wants the list. It’s not all that important to me to define what is is to be a lesbian—constant shifting, the ever new—but I can’t help but want to know who else is at the table with me, who I can call kin... "

For some unknown reason Shapland wants to exclude me. And I do not like it. The us versus them syndrome. I think her diatribe is becoming too much and she is beginning to tire me with her obsession of wanting to belong to a clearly defined group exclusive of persons like me. News flash: Not all men are like Donald J. Trump, although I am afraid there are abundantly too many. Still, isn’t it wrong to reject me because of my gender or sexual orientation? All of us progressives were set back years, even decades, by the election of Donald J. Trump as president of the United States. And what we learned first was really how ununited as a country we actually are. And I fear it is worldwide, and not just happening in our own country.

"...How else would someone with a secret, criminalized, pathologized identity feel but anxious and depressed?..."

After my generation’s period of free love in the late sixties (free sex of which I had none) there was a period of flashy wide lapels, disco, and open marriages. Trading partners became a hot topic. My partner and I have endured a mostly conventional marriage even in light of thirty-six years together with the occasional entertaining thought of initiating a sanctioned adultery. But there are certain societal norms we must want to remain conventional, and those we do not. Sexual orientation is not one of these. Even gender identity and equality should be thought of as conventional. But due to old beliefs, or fucking bibles interpreted whatever way best advances archaic ideas, or just plain prejudice, some things are very slow to change. I always felt having sex was generally speaking a private thing. Or who we had it with. And fortunately ideas regarding appropriate dress, child-rearing, and even sex have changed sometimes drastically through my sixty-six years. For example, until today it would have been impossible to think we could have an openly gay man running to be president of the United States. And given the country’s current divisive attitudes and beliefs he has as good a chance as any to dethrone that ignorant buffoon Donald J. Trump.

."..I feel lonely because the world that finds its way through to me, via the internet, or invitations I often turn down, or cancelled plans, suggests that life is happening elsewhere. It is someplace outside my home, where I work, and outside my mind, where I often live..."

To share a life with the dead or missing seems to be always my first choice. The fact that I have a spouse, a loving relationship dating back almost fifty years, a marriage spanning thirty-six and counting, certainly requires the bulk of my available energy and love. But another part of me is always looking for an additional love, a virtual one I do admit, but nonetheless a chance at making my life fuller. Something I cannot get from the often awful and evil world I sometimes occupy when confronted with our garbage society and the political news I get from the tube and my google machine.

"...Biography and its presumptions have bothered me for some time...To read Carson’s letters and therapy transcripts after reading the biographies and to continue to hear from strangers that Carson was not a lesbian, did not have a relationship with Mary, is unnerving…"

I wholeheartedly believe Shapland’s forensic research resulting in this book. I also believe people rewrite history to their own liking. Or what is deemed best for us to regard as the truthful record for our own good. In "Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me" Deirdre Bair writes in her memoir how she was faced with similar problems that Shapland has related that incurred in her time researching the life of Samuel Beckett. Bair contrasts that experience to the contemporary where “...We live now in an age of indecency, when nothing is off-limits.” This was not the case back in the period lived by Carson McCullers or Samuel Beckett. And Bair is not making a statement regarding homosexuality as being indecent. She is simply saying that nothing is off-limits today. The Instagram application allows the most banal and disgusting of sorts to reveal it all. And so, anything goes. It is my hope that great literature aspires to a more lofty goal than just anything goes, just as it did when Carson McCullers penned her two masterpieces.

A very clever title and premise. Carson's life and struggles drew me in; I wanted to know so much more about her. In this regard Jenn Shepland did an admirable job in research and presentation. For some reason, however, I didn't connect emotionally with Shepland, and had a difficult time relating to her experiences, even as closely as they mirrored Carson's. Yet, I am highly appreciative of an author who takes the time to do such in-depth research.
My thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is the first time I’ve encountered Jenn Shapland‘s writing and I can certainly see why she has been granted numerous prestigious residencies and won several significant awards. She does write beautifully.

Shapland’s first book, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, however, is probably not the best showcase of her talent. In most cases, I enjoy books that cross genre lines, but this mashup of queer history, literary criticism, and memoir is just not smooth.

I would love to read a Shapland-penned straight up (pardon the pun) biography of McCullers, a queer-focused exploration of her work, or Shapland’s memoir about coming out to herself and others. The mixture of the three is clunky. Part of the problem is one of voice. I kept getting jolted from discussions of ontology to paragraphs containing the term “BFF” and generous sprinklings of the f-word.

All that said, I had no problem finishing the book. I was fascinated by all three of the perspectives, and will now go in search of more about McCullers. I’ll also move the novels she wrote to the top of my TBR list and keep an eye out for Jenn Shapland’s name on future work.

I suspect that the advanced reader’s copy I received was a very early edition and that there will be some tightening done in the galleys. For now, I’m giving this 3 stars.

Thanks to Netgalley for this advanced readers copy.