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)