Monday, May 11, 2009

Black Beech & Honey Dew

An Autobiography by Ngaio Marsh.

After enjoying Joanne Drayton's biography of Ngaio Marsh I thought I'd read about her life from the horses mouth, so to speak.

In truth I found this book a little frustrating, OK, a lot frustrating. Joanne Drayton had alluded to the fact Ngaio Marsh was extremely reticent about her private life, and that is certainly the case, but that isn't what frustrated me the most.

From the stand point of someone who loves her for her crime fiction writing, she spoke so little about it. In fact I learned nothing about her motivations behind writing crime fiction, or even how she felt about her success with it. The autobiography concentrates a lot on her childhood, and also about her life in the theatre, so it didn't have a lot to offer the crime fiction aficionado. The version I read was the original. Perhaps I shall have to track down the revised edition she did a decade or so down the track. Back to the second hand book shops...

2 comments:

Rachael King said...

I had a similar problem with the biopic of Johnny Cash. It was about the facts of his life, but gave no insight into his creative process or what drew him to such dark subject matter right from the start of his career.

Vanda Symon said...

These private people are a damn nuisance! (-: