Book Review: A Life of One's Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again by Joanna Biggs

Did they find fulfillment?

I’m always reading and I write reviews of the books I’m enjoying in my head. But I rarely write them out for others. I’m trying to change that and offer short book reviews for my paid subscribers! I meant to just write a couple of short paragraphs and then this turned into a long reflection on the creative life and motherhood/family life.

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This book by British writer Joanna Biggs follows eight famous women writers in their quest for freedom while reflecting on how they inspired her own path to self-fulfillment in the wake of a divorce, the death of her mother, and a transatlantic move to New York City. Biggs leads the reader through the creative lives and personal lives of Mary Wollstonecraft, George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison, and Elena Ferrante. The ninth woman is Biggs herself.