My review of Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters By Laura Thompson

 

Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters

By Laura Thompson

My rating 5 out of 5 stars

After finishing this biography I flipped back to the first page and began again (something I almost never do), so much did I love it.

The key to its "un-put-downability" lies not in just the intriguing Mitfords, but in Laura Thompson's biographical prowess.

Her vivid character studies, the immediacy of her situational narrative, are beautifully sealed with Thompson's passion of tackling this astonishing family's history, as a group and as separate people (each of which are entrancing).

As with only those few, special biographies, this work transcends its primary purpose - the study of notable persons - becoming a literary achievement in itself.

A key question facing any biographer must be: how to explain the inner-world of such notables? (Because regardless how 'public' these may seem, their most private complexities underlie their outcomes).

The answer is surely, besides the formal research and some speculation, that innate understanding of human nature, that unteachable talent for explaining it away. Such is the difference between voices like Thompson's and the dread drone of academia.

So glued did I remain in my instant second reading, I was compelled to order-in Thompson's earlier work, Life in a Cold Climate: Nancy Mitford which, whilst containing certain 'stock' Mitford fare in 'Take Six Girls' and endless other works, I similarly golloped up in just days.

'Take Six Girls' is my favourite biographical read in years.

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