LIFESCAPES

The acclaimed biographer and obituarist for The Economist reflects on a career spent pursuing life and capturing it on the page Lifescapes is the universe in miniature DAILY TELEGRAPHIt is soul that I go looking for Or to put it another way real life She s a genius I believe HILARY MANTEL author of Wolf Hall What is life asked the poet Shelley and could not come up with an answer Scientists too for all their understanding of how life manifests thrives and evolves have still not plumbed that fundamental question Yet biographers and obituarists continue to corral lives in a few columns or a few hundred pages aware all the time how fleeting and elusive their subject is In this dazzlingly original blend of memoir biography observation and poetry Ann Wroe reflects on the art and impossibility of capturing life on the page Through her experiences and those of others through people she has known studied or merely glimpsed in windows she movingly explores what makes a life and how that life lingers after Animated by Wroe s rare imagination eye for the telling detail and the wit beauty and clarity of her writing Lifescapes is a luminous deeply personal answer to Shelley s question