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“Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee” by Charles J. Shields (Holt, 2006) –
The author of the 1960 Pulitzer-winning novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” donated no archive, did no interviews; and gave no quarter to her biographer, leaving him without some of the usual tools. He succeeds nonetheless. Readers enamored of Lee’s lifelong friend, Truman Capote, will be gratified by the detailed descriptions of the two writers’ unusual collaboration on Capote’s famous literary nonfiction work, “In Cold Blood.” [Update: Shields is now at work on a bio of Kurt Vonnegut.]
–Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, April 2010
(For book reviews with more words, see my archive at The Seattle Times, where I worked for some years. I freelance for the paper as a reviewer and over the years have been assigned some terrific books.)
