Lives Like Loaded Guns
Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds

I don't believe I need to read any more books about Emily Dickinson. With this and White Heat, I'm satiated. Time to go back to the poems... Lyndall Gordon seems to be a trustworthy guide through the Dickinson thicket of mythology and legend...She focuses on the family and the rifts(s) that ensued wi......more

La biografia di Lyndall Gordon su Emily Dickinson trasforma l'immagine convenzionale della poetessa, da sempre descritta come una donna solitaria vestita di bianco, in fuga dal mondo forse dopo una tragica storia d'amore, che ha trascorso la sua vita confinata nella casa del padre facendo giardinagg......more

If you think a novel about a staid 19th-century New England family—including an sickly maiden poet daughter—torn apart by a swinging couple, its wife seducing the married brother while the spinster poet writes and writes and glowers—the married woman largely responsible in the most vindictive of way......more

Two stars is really my fault. I was looking for a book about Emily Dickinson. Instead this is the messy story of her family in her lifetime and far beyond. According to Gordon, the events in the Dickinson/Todd saga don't seem come from love or passion but more from jealousy and what becomes a desire......more