Karen Lystra

Although this book purports to be a holistic account of Mark Twain's declining years, it is anything but. The first half of the book is basically a medical biography of the Twain daughters and the second half is a minute accounting of Twain's finances; both halves carry the brief of trying to condemn two evil functionaries within the Twain household for defalcation and, more importantly, wrongfully institutionalizing one of the Twain daughters. Needless to say, the avalanche of minutiae deployed to prove these minute points was not what I signed up for. The author leaves the impression, without quite saying so, that her book is a work of revisionism and that earlier biographers have been too kind to her villains. That she seemed to me to make her point conclusively doesn't help the book's readability one whit, and neither does her florid hagiography of the girls. On the whole she writes well, though an editor somewhere needs to be taken to the woodshed and taught the difference between "it's" and "its"; I tired of reading fourth-graders' papers decades ago. As an academic resource, this will be valuable; as something to read, I didn't enjoy the weeks I spent getting through it.… (mehr)

This book tends to get positive feedback for its research and mediocre feedback for its writing style. As there are so few reviews of this book on LibraryThing, I feel the need to go on record saying that this book fascinated me, and I loved reading it. Lystra is in the camp that says Lyon and Ashcroft tried to take over management of Twain's estate and assets and fought over them with Twain's daughters, Clara and Jean. However, a rounded portrait is made of Lyon, and she is not portrayed entirely negatively, although I have to conclude that more is made of her excessive drinking than can be proved, since she lived to the age of 95!… (mehr)