Synopses & Reviews
Review
"It is a piece of good fortune to have, so soon after her death in 1981, a thorough biography of Caroline Gordon, the Kentucky-born novelist and, by virtue of her marriage to Alien Tate, a member of the Agrarian literary circle of the 1930's. Close Connections is prodigiously researched, and it paints a clear picture of Gordon as a passionate, difficult, unhappy woman, devoted equally to her art and her husband.
Waldron also provides fascinating glimpses of the Tates' literary friends—Ford Maddox Ford, Hart Crane, Robert Lowell, and others—and offers a superb portrait of the Southern Agrarians as a literary community, criticizing and supporting one another throughout their careers. The only real disappointment is the presentation of Tate, who emerges from Waldron's highly partisan account of Gordon's marriage as a sort of comic-opera villain. It is hard not to feel that this is only half the story, but Tate's side of it will no doubt be told in time; for the moment we can be thankful to have Gordon's told so thoroughly and well." Reviewed by Robert Jackson, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)