Sarah Hartley
Autor von Mrs.P's Journey: The Remarkable Story of the Woman Who Created the A-Z Map
Werke von Sarah Hartley
Getagged
Wissenswertes
- Geschlecht
- female
Mitglieder
Rezensionen
Statistikseite
- Werke
- 3
- Mitglieder
- 122
- Beliebtheit
- #163,289
- Bewertung
- 3.4
- Rezensionen
- 3
- ISBNs
- 5
The book wasn’t what I expected. Pearsall’s biographer focused more on her childhood and young adulthood than on the creation of the A-Z and her professional life. Some mention of her family background was necessary, as Pearsall probably would not have come up with the idea for the A-Z had her father not been in the map-making business. (He was not a cartographer, but he owned a cartographic company.) However, the book disproportionately focuses on the early half of Phyllis’s life and her dysfunctional family.
The author’s foreword includes a troubling passage:
I have written the truth according to Phyllis. For I am convinced that every story, every memory and every encounter that she described, she believed to be true. Of course, when starting with such a shaky foundation, I have not felt uncomfortable interweaving elements of fiction into fact. But if truth be known, my fiction turned out to be much more mundane than her ‘fact’. If there is a scene, or a word, or a character, you believe to be too fantastical, it is likely they are real.
In the absence of footnotes or end notes, it is impossible to separate fact from fiction (or the author’s fiction from Phyllis’s conflicting accounts of her own life). Recommended with reservations as a book about an influential woman whose work benefited hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom were likely unaware of her existence.… (mehr)