She discovers a woman who deeply loved other women while lacking the terms and perhaps the space to define her queer desire. Shapland, who endured a painfully closeted relationship before fully coming into her own queer identity, finds in McCullers “a familiarly protracted becoming.” She mines McCullers’ correspondence, transcripts of her therapy sessions (which were at one point intended to become her autobiography), and other personal effects and even lives for a month in McCullers’ childhood home.
Interning in the archives of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Shapland followed a scholar’s query to a trove of letters between novelist Carson McCullers (1917–67) and Swiss artist Annemarie Clarac-Schwarzenbach: “I wasn’t expecting love letters.” This memoir, a creative blend of probing research and emotional discoveries, including self-discovery, grew from a resulting obsession to balance the biographical record of McCullers, which generally euphemizes or casts outright doubt on her love for women. it is sharp-eyed and sensitive about biography as a form, and it is a vital piece of life-writing in its own right * New Statesman *Ī fascinating and intimate examination of the work of archives, research and historic preservation as well as the arc of identity and social construction. Weird and un-categorisable (in a good way) * Guardian (Nonfiction to look out for in 2021) * The kind of state-of-the-form reckoning that makes one wish there were more like it * New York Times Book Review * beautifully and sparsely written - Melanie Reid * The Times (Ireland) *Ī very interesting and innovative work * Irish Times * Political and at times polemical, it's a call to arms to reappraise past lives. My Autobiography of Carson McCullers is the result: impeccably young, modern and fresh, an assertion of lesbian liberation. In the process of recasting McCullers, Shapland finds her own identity. What makes this such an unusual work, far removed from conventional biography, is that it's as much Shapland's story as it is McCullers's. The truth about Carson McCullers, the great American gothic writer, is finally told. At the same time, this volume, which I admire and recommend without reservation, speaks clearly and universally of the human heart, and specifically of the human heart in conflict with itself - Sara Wheeler * Literary Review * The politics of female queerness are central to this book, and Shapland handles the subject adroidy. The reader sees McCullers afresh in these pages. Only an accomplished writer could marshal this tricky material in order to enmesh two stories. But it is Shapland's identification with her subject that energises the book. A lively cast of walk-on characters includes Tennessee Williams, Elizabeth Bowen, Edith Sitwell and Robert Lowell. Shards of the author's own life glitter amid the story of McCullers's triumphs and struggles.
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