26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
process based research and biography ,Yes!, November 16, 2005
I heartily disagree with the previous review. Nuala O'Faolain is not seeking to merely recreate a biography in this book, but to urge readers to consider and ruminate upon the lives of women on the fringes of society, those millions who have led hard-scrabble, often brutal, lives throughout history. Her commentary seems, to me, not to be intrusive, but rather chronicles the connections made between the lives of the author and the subject. O'Faolain examines what might be universal themes, tying May to her family, to herself, to the reader, to the world. If one only wants to know about Chicago May, in the way we might examine her at a historical museum, this may not be the book for that person, but for those who wonder about how women fall into infamous and terrible situations, how history is rewritten, and what the realistic brutalities of early twentieth century life were--this book will give those readers a lot to think over.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
She Did It Her Way, July 28, 2007
I first heard of Irish writer Nuala O'Faolain when I picked up one of her books in the WH Smith at Heathrow as I ran to catch a flight back to the States. Sometimes we are drawn to certain authors in mysterious ways, as if the moments were meant to be. Thereafter, I was led to her two memoirs, breathtaking in their candor about moving through stages of life as a young Irish girl, a writer, and mature woman coming to terms with her past.
Knowing this writer's work, I didn't expect "The Story of Chicago May" to be a traditional biography, and it most certainly was not. May Duignan, born in post-famine Ireland, nicked her family's savings and ran away to America. There, she achieved legendary status as "Chicago May," working as a thief, outlaw, showgirl and prostitute.
What I find remarkable is how the writer weaves in her own process of discovery and personal experience in researching and writing the book. This approach won't work for all readers. Some prefer the conventional biography, but others will find this book refreshing. No matter how a writer strives for objectivity, biography writing will never truly elude the subjectivity of the writer's own experience. O'Faolain did it her way, though she painstakingly researched her elusive subject. She literally traced the steps of May through city after city on two different continents.
Years of May's life were spent in prisons on both sides of the Atlantic, but she managed to survive a life on the edge. Exhausted and sick at heart, she later met police reformer August Vollmer, who convinced her to write her autobiography as a way toward the light. O'Faolain refuses to sugarcoat the "Queen of Crook's" struggle to make ends meet, her experiences in and out of prison, or her poor choices in men, several notorious crooks in their own right.
"Hope kept me up," May wrote in her last, desperate note to Vollner before her death as "a tired old prostitute" in an unmarked grave in Philadelphia. But the book is not about a character who tried to save her own soul, whatever that may be interpreted to be. It ends with just as many questions about the seeming lack of meaning in May's life, yet assures us that even such a life as hers is worth examining: "Out there, people are waiting in the dark. Shine the beam of attention out there. The dark recoils."
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Herstory, January 3, 2006
I thought that this was a terrificly engaging book - read in two sittings. I very much liked Ms O'Faolain's two volumes of memoirs and this is a discernable and organic development of those investigations into life and love. This is a feminist, though unacademic, rewriting of history using impressively detailed research to recreate a picture of a largely unknown and 'unimportant' woman who was notorious as a streetwalker and bank-robber in her day. The combination of disparate sources - some less reliable than others - with the author's own ruminations on the mindset of her subject and the exile of her brother, makes this tale of two women layered and effortlessly enagaging. O'Faolain manages to be chatty while shrewly intelligent, approachable while uncompromising in her retelling of a forgotten history. Especially fascinating, and wholey unexpected, is May's encounter with Irish rebel Countess Markievicz in prison in England. O'Faolain manages to uncover a May who is both of her time and very modern; endlessly independent, often ruthless while also foolish and vulnerable in affairs of the heart. Chicago May's life was not heroic but it was filled with wildness and incident - across cities, continents and love-affairs. It would make a wonderful film though it might prove too strange to be believed. O'Faolain's decision to place herself in the narrative of its telling gives back to May some of the humanity denied to her in the yellow press of her time as well as offering the reader an always interesting insight into the mind of a strikingly intelligent, lucid and emotionally frank biographer.
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