Monday, July 14, 2014

Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P.L. Travers by Valerie Lawson | Book Review


Mary Poppins, She Wrote is an incredibly dense detailed biography of P.L. Travers.  Upon reading this book, you will really feel like you know P.L. Travers by the end.  I requested this on impulse after the hubby and I watched Saving Mr. Banks.  (Which is an excellent movie by the way; I highly recommend it!)

So the perks are that I learned a lot about P.L. Travers by reading this book.... and that's also a downside.  Turns out she wasn't the most likable, sane, or sensible woman.  She traveled quite a bit and had an interesting circle of friends, most all of whom were authors themselves, so there's that.

I'm writing this review about a month after reading the book and I really can't think of much else to say.  It was almost a hard book to get through because it's so detailed.  There's not a day in P.L. Traver's life that isn't chronicled here.  But it's also forgettable.  And I think I remember it being a bit jumpy with the timeline; that the author may have doubled back on herself a couple of times.  Not a terrible book; not a great book.  I'd recommend it to a student doing a biography or a literary criticism paper, but I don't know that I'd recommend it for pleasure reading.

*I received my copy from my public library.

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