Customer Reviews

Anne McCaffrey: A Life with Dragons

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is an outstanding biography: well-written, interesting, and in depth. Unlike the previous two biographies (Dragonholder and Anne McCaffrey: Science Fiction Storyteller (People to Know), both out of print), this one is a thorough examination of Anne's life, from childhood and schooling, to marriage and divorce, to her move to Ireland and struggles to make writing a successful career, to her eventual bestseller status and enjoyment of being a "real" fairy godmother to friends and family, and her continued writing to this day. It gives a good portrait of Anne's personality and what shaped it, how her life has shaped her writing and conversely how her writing shaped her life. It doesn't shy from covering her love affairs, details which are not to be found in any previous biography (which isn't surprising: the Trachtenberg bio was aimed at pre-teen readers and her own son wrote the other biography). Altogether it gives a detailed, intimate look at Anne McCaffrey's life. Any fan of Anne's books should enjoy learning about the forces that shaped her fition.

The main gripes other reviewers have with this biography stem from a wish to have a more "fan's perspective" biography. While this biography does suffer occasionally from the 'clunkiness' of a researched biography written by an academic rather than a glossy biography written by a professional biography writer: as a lover of Anne McCaffrey's books, and as someone who for a long time has really wanted to know more about Anne as a woman, a young person, a struggling writer and what it felt like at that shear blissful moment of finding out that other people WANT to read your stories I thoroughly enjoyed this biography. Added bonuses are the backdrop of family, country and world events and politics - which really do add extra insight into the writer herself.

An interesting tale of the life of Anne McCaffrey and how she struggled to become a writer of SI_FI fantasy, her emigration to Ireland and struggles to adapt, her family, &
her love of horses, esp. Ed.

This book wasn't as good as I expected it to be but I am still glad I read it. I learned a lot about Anne McCaffrey, which is the purpose of a biography but the writing itself was repetitive and there were many places that I really had to push myself to continue reading. Also, the editing was not very good; many words were broken by hyphens where they shouldn't have been. I would recommend this book to a die-hard McCaffrey fan like myself but a casual reader would probably not enjoy it.

This is a well written and insightful view into the life of one of our great authors. Those of us who have read Anne McCaffrey's work over the decades already have some knowledge of the Great Lady - who she is, how she thinks, and what she's accomplished - but Robin Roberts opens that door to her life even wider. For all those lovers of Pern, the Tower, Brainships and Coelera this is a wonderful addition to our libraries.

Robin Roberts was allowed full access to Anne McCaffrey, her family, and Anne's papers. She has written a very scholarly, very entertaining, informative, fascinating biography of Anne. Ms. Roberts obviously has sincere admiration for her subject, but she diligently recounts all of the factors - warts and all - that helped shape Anne into the beloved author that she is today. Her detailed knowledge of all of Anne's books (she has also written a non-fiction book about Anne's books)adds interesting insights. If you really want to know Anne McCaffrey and what shaped her body of work, read this book! It is excellent!

Anne Mccaffrey: A Life With Dragons is meant for fans of the author's Pern books. For a true fan like me, this is an interesting read, though it doesn't always focus on the aspects I would have liked to know more about. I would have liked to know more about Anne herself and less about interpretation of her books or background about her perceived roles in changing fantasy. An important note is this is not an "authorized biography" though Robin Roberts was able to speak with Anne and get papers and such. Anne led an interesting life and it makes for interesting reading in the end.

It is not easy to write a readable and entertaining biography while at the same time keeping the scientific value and the historical level high. Well, Robin Roberts is a master at it and this product the best she has written until now. This biography is a must for every Anne McCaffrey fan. And my warmest compliments to the dragonlady herself for opening up personally and file-wise and thus accomodating a cracking good book on her life and accomplishments. And if you start talking about this science fiction author's accomplishments you need every page you get!

Given the high praise from earlier reviewers, I was expecting a more organized and less repetitive work. I expected Roberts to make better use of the material she had access to, letting Anne McCaffrey speak for herself. I realise that balancing the two voices (biographer and subject) is hard; in my opinion, the biographer's voice is too loud in this biography. When it comes time to triage my library again, I will keep Anne's books but not this biography.

This biography gave the impression of looking through binoculars the wrong way round. Unimportant details were greatly magnified and the overall impression confused. Sexuality was deemed of critical importance but there was incredibly little insight given into the conceptual genius of a truly great fantasy writer. The nonfantasy works were dismissed as autobiographical material without acclaim of the degree of human insight displayed nor the mastery of lyrical prose. In short, the biographer Robin Roberts, needs new glasses and should tackle something more in scale with its own inherent ability. If you read this book first, you would never read Anne McCaffrey ... and that would be your loss.