Norman Maclean
A Life of Letters and Rivers

Norman Maclean deserves a proper biography. This is not it. The book is as much about Rebecca McCarthy as it is about Norman Maclean. McCarthy’s personal reflections didn’t add anything of value to the main subject (Maclean) and, in fact, actually detracted from it. And, aside from this, the focus o......more

For fans of Norman Maclean and/or "A River Runs Through It And Other Stories," this book is a wonderful glimpse into the life of a great American writer, and how his work came to be.......more

I read A River Runs Through It in the late 1990's. I was mesmerized by the language and the story. How much of this was true? Was this story autobiographical? These questions are among several that McCarthy addresses in the course of her biography. One answer is that, yes, Maclean had a brother who......more

Rebecca McCarthy’s biography of Norman Maclean is a laudable achievement. It captures not only the Norman Maclean I knew as a grad student in 1970 but the much larger picture of the man in all of his complexities. Rebecca knew him long and well, I only briefly, as a student of Wordsworth in understa......more

A fine book that combines memoir and biography to gleam a closer look at the late great Norman Maclean. Some of the details I found to be very intimate (how he addresses young women as “darling” and his love for L.L. bean and his hatred for another brand, etc.) Overall, there were a few “dead spots”......more