“Maunsell presents a nuanced account of Sontag’s intellectual development. He traces her ever-present subjects, above all the duty of the writer to direct attention, while seeing that her books arose ‘out of self-correction’ and self-contestation, the result of a continuing ‘readiness to immerse herself in contemporariness.’ Indeed, the achievement of Maunsell’s biography is that he makes sense of Sontag’s responsiveness to the contemporary and the currency this gave her work for over half a century—a period long enough for her to repeatedly modify arguments or reason on the contrary. She was an oppositional writer, and the opposition was frequently wielded against herself. Maunsell champions her ‘crucially misunderstood’ early novels, judged as failures in realism rather than on their own terms as Duchamp-like ‘endlessly reconstructable puzzles,’ designed to resist analysis.”  

Times Literary Supplement

“Above all, Sontag was a writer—with all the longing, doubt, envy, and occasional sabotage of her own talent that implies. She seems more, not less, of a sympathetic character now that we know how much energy she put into constructing a persona called Susan Sontag, then playing the role with panache . . . This [is a] short but instructive biography . . . a svelte account of Sontag’s life.”  

Literary Review

“The present clear, readable, and relatively brief biography, in Reaktion’s ‘Critical Lives’ series, is the best available introduction to Sontag’s life. Maunsell pays extended attention to her work—essays, novels, short stories, and films—as well as her life.”

Choice

“Maunsell’s short biography covers both the life and the work [of Sontag] and integrates the two effectively. . . . Maunsell’s book is highly readable, and, to date, is the best of the biographical writings.”  

Australian Book Review