The Untold Journey: The Life of Diana Trilling

Robins (Copeland’s Cure) chronicles the life of critic, essayist, and author Diana Trilling (1905–1996). Both Diane and her husband, Lionel, a celebrated literary scholar, came from troubled homes, and Trilling endured a difficult marriage marred by Lionel’s misogyny and violent temper. Meanwhile, she suffered anxiety disorders that led to her heavy involvement in Freudianism. Eventually she found her place as her husband’s editor, and then as a book critic, writer, and intellectual. In her 70s, she wrote the bestselling Mrs. Harris: The Death of the Scarsdale Diet Doctor. Plunging straight into Trilling’s story, Robins never fails to entertain as she guides readers adeptly through the midcentury world of the New York Jewish intelligentsia. She even offers a twist ending for Lionel. Robins treats Trilling even-handedly, but the book would have benefited from a firmer stand on whether Trilling was a first-rate intellect quashed by an abusive marriage or a second-rater who exploited her husband’s fame. A glance at Diana’s work makes it clear that she had a top-notch mind, but Robins’s readers might be forgiven for confusion. Even so, the book is a fine, important treatment of an undervalued thinker. (May)