Lifescapes: A Biographer’s Search for the Soul

Wroe (Six Facets of Light) draws on her life and her career as obituaries editor for the Economist in this freewheeling exploration of “the unique and essential part of ourselves” most synonymous with the soul and the challenges of capturing it on the page. According to Wroe, the clues to this essential self are found in the particulars: a sugar cake whose sweetness evokes a great aunt; “the gesture of taking someone’s pulse, touching the fingers gently to the wrist, then falling silent to listen.” Exploring how other artists aim to capture their subjects’ “life-force,” she notes that figurative artists complete the first study of a figure in “a minute, to catch not the shape or the mass but... to seize something more,” while poets including Stanley Kunitz traverse the “boundaries between what they observe and themselves.” In the end, Wroe suggests the soul might be best defined as a transitory force that is rooted in a love that operates “according to its own laws. Instead of pausing over our troubles, it pours itself out continually among them.” Wroe delivers her perceptive insights into life, death, and the struggle for meaning in luminous prose, though her rapid shifts between topics (she moves from Fidel Castro’s mistress to chess champion Bobby Fischer in a few sentences) can feel haphazard. Still, spiritually curious readers will be captivated by Wroe’s wide-ranging quest to understand what comprises a life. (Oct.)