Overview

""A lyrical, radiant memoir."" —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review Ann Wroe, obituaries editor for The Economist, reflects on the art and impossibility of capturing life on the page. Through her experiences and through people she has known, studied, or merely glimpsed in windows, she movingly explores what makes a life and how that life lingers after in this breathtaking combination of poetry, memoir, and observation. 'What is life?' asked the poet Shelley, and he could not come up with an answer. Scientists, too, for all their understanding of how life manifests, thrives and evolves, have still not answered that fundamental question. Yet biographers and obituarists continue to corral lives in a few columns, or a few hundred pages, aware all the time how fleeting and elusive their subject is. In this dazzlingly original blend of poetry, biography, observation, and memoir, Wroe explores the experience of trying to capture the essence of a person. Animated by her rare imagination, eye for the telling detail, and the wit, beauty and clarity of her writing, Lifescapes is a luminous, deeply personal answer to Shelley's question.

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9781400347933

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Reviews

'Lifescapes encourages us to take a deep breath, contemplate life more keenly and acknowledge the miraculous if--and when--we find it.' * Observer * 'A lyrical, radiant memoir.' * Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review * 'What a treat it is to read a writer at the top of her game...astonishing.' * Daily Telegraph * 'Wroe operates like a kind of tuning fork . . . She seems to feel the energy that thrums in people, nature and objects . . . Compelling.' * Times Literary Supplement * 'Wroe's writing is intense and visionary, at times almost ecstatic. Reader, dive in . . . Her voice, her writing, already add such consonance, such alert and graceful rapture, to the music of the world.' * Spectator *

Author Information

Ann Wroe is the obituaries editor of The Economist and has written its weekly obituary for two decades. She is the author of eight previous works of non-fiction, including biographies of Pontius Pilate (shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Award and the W.H. Smith Award), Perkin Warbeck, Shelley, Orpheus (winner of the Criticos Prize) and St. Francis. Lifescapes is her most recent book and was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Biography. She lives in Brighton and London.

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