I bought this book not because of any great interest in Tennessee Williams or his work, but because of my huge esteem for John Lahr as a critic. And having now fallen into the world of Tennessee Williams, I find myself, somewhat to my surprise, hugely interested in it. What Lahr has done with this book is to make Williams come fully alive, as if in flesh and blood - I don't know that I've ever read a biography that has accomplished this improbable feat so skillfully. And the complicated and fascinating relationship between the life and the creative impulse and the often anguished realization of that impulse on the page and then on the stage (with the crucial intervention of producers, directors and actors) is clarified in a mesmerizingly absorbing narrative. This is both a biography and a work of interpretative criticism, but it reads like a great, great novel.

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