Carol Sklenicka is the author of Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life, which was named of one of the 10 Best Books of 2009 by The New York Times Book Review, and Alice Adams: Portrait of a Writer. She lives with poet and novelist R.M. Ryan in northern California.
"Alice Adams is a perceptive, elegantly written biography that will
broaden her renown and readership." --San Francisco Chronicle
"Carol Sklenicka is a lucid, scrupulous writer... [who] is prudent
and appreciative in her assessment of Adams's work."--Blake Bailey,
The New York Times Book Review
"In her empathetic, revealing and brisk new biography, Carol
Sklenicka frames Adams' life and work within themes of escape,
redemption and persistence... [She] deftly deploys quoted bits to
illustrate how the life and work are so intricately intertwined.
The art of literary biography -- Sklenicka previously explored
Raymond Carver -- thus resembles an enormous, three-dimensional
jigsaw puzzle... Adams' footprint has faded. Sklenicka's portrait
may well encourage new readers and justifiably revive her
reputation." --The Minneapolis Star Tribune "Drawing on extensive
original sources, Carol Sklenicka gives us the first full-length
popular biography of brilliant novelist and short story writer
Alice Adams. For decades, Adams rendered believably
three-dimensional female characters in beautiful, cut-glass prose
in venues like The New Yorker." --Christian Science Monitor, Best
Books of December
"Pervasive deep research informs this inspiring story of a writer
who demonstrably earned such a sturdy, illuminating biography."
--Kirkus Reviews, starred review "After a long apprenticeship,
hampered by supporting her husband's own writing career before
their 1958 divorce, Adams found an audience in the 1970s that was
newly avid for her core concern: female-centric depictions of love
and sex...Sklenicka's well-researched biography...easily evokes the
spirit of Adams's life, times, and works." --Publishers Weekly
"Sklenicka is clearly a skilled biographer. Her writing is engaging
yet simple and lacks the pretense and gentility Adams seemingly
would have hated. No detail, story, or analysis feels unnecessary,
an accomplishment for a work totaling more than 500 pages."
--Chicago Review of Books
"Those who love the novels and short stories, which trace women's
lives beginning in 1930s America as they celebrate, grieve, and
grow with the century, will be startled and delighted to see where
the life and the fiction converge. [This] biography often reads
like an Adams novel blessedly slowed down to allow the reader to
soak for a moment in the atmospheres of a Chapel Hill childhood,
Radcliffe College, Paris, and 1960s San Francisco." --Booklist
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