"Attempting to solve 'the riddle' of Tillie Lerner Olsen, literary scholar Reid paints a warts-and-all portrait of the woman who became an iconic feminist and admired writer. Reid paints a deftly engrossing, nuanced, and meticulously researched portrait of a perplexing, larger-than-life woman."
~Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"Reid sets out to interrogate the heroic feminist image that adorned Olsen in her last decades, to fill in the neglected, blurred, or falsified facts of her long life, and to answer riddles—most notably, 'why didn't Tillie write?'. An ambitious and obsessively well-researched biography."
~Women's Review of Books
"Reid brings her extraordinarily complex and endlessly perplexing subject to vitally disarming life and her book provides substantively more for Olsenites than any previous attempt. Tillie Olsen is rich—and riddled with answers."
~Philadelphia Inquirer
"A biographical bombshell. Reid's meticulous research undoes the feminist legend of Saint Tillie and replaces it with a complex, even-handed account of a passionate, often devious, and always ideological woman writer.
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~Elaine Showalter, author of A Jury of Her Peers
"Panthea Reid tells an enthralling, complicated story of a maddening, charismatic writer; her self-creation, self-destruction, and self-promotion; and her profound social commitments."
~Patricia Meyer Spacks, author of Reading Eighteenth-Century Poetry
"Panthea Reid's quest for the truth about the courageous, egotistical, generous, maddening, and difficult Tillie Olsen is downright heroic. Tillie Olsen: One Woman, Many Riddles is biography at its fascinating best."
~Valerie Martin, author of The Confessions of Edward Day
"Reid concludes her book with a sense of conflicted loss. While she wept at Olsen's death, 'I have never adored Tillie,' she admits. Reverence hampers facts, she says, then adds, 'My biographer's obligation . . .is to tell the truth as artfully as possible and not to let love hamper honesty.' No wise reader could ask for anything more."
~Susan Comninos, Christian Science Monitor
"Brilliant. Professor Reid sympathetically and critically describers the strengths and foibles of the iconic Olsen. Her intimate revelations are pertinent to Tillie's complex character."
~Jewish Press
"Biographer Panthea Reid's extensive research reveals that some accounts of Olsen's life are more fable than fact. While Reid solves some riddles, she creates additional ones for admirers and scholars to ponder in the years ahead."
~Bloomsbury Review
"Panthea Reid chronicles a journey for knowledge and social justice that spans the entire 20th century and follows the events that made the times momentous. Olsen is a biography of rare humanity. It is profoundly real. Reid has written a marvelously
evocative book."
~The Advocate
"This book is well-researched and provides an in-depth look at Olsen's life.
Ried definitely knocks Olsen off any saintly pedestalàbut she does this without lessening the impact of Olsen's work."
~Feminist Review
"A remarkable amount of material on the life of Olsen. Students of Olsen's work will find this a valuable guide to the autobiographical roots of Olsen's fiction."
~Jewish Book World
"Reid has succeeded in giving us a well-rounded and well-grounded picture of Tillie Olsen. This book is a major achievement in offering a balanced appraisal of Tillie Olsen, who was revered by some and reviled by others."
~National Jewish Post & Opinion
"Superb and painstaking biography. Reid artfully depicts a tortured writer whose concern for oppressed masses often eclipsed her duty to intimates."
~Star-Ledger
"Get ready for the unflinching, warts-and-all story of Tillie Lerner Olsen. Reid unwraps the riddle of Olsen's complex personality in this fascinating biography."
~Carolina Arts and Sciences Magazine
"Great lives challenge and empower an intelligent, determined biographer. Tillie Olsen lived a great life to which Panthea Reid does full justice.
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~Town Topics
"A feminist icon, beloved of the left and also a superb delineator of what blocks writers from writing, Tillie Olsen is deserving of this penetrating biography, the first book to unravel the riddle of a life devoted to and tormented by writing."
~Kansas City Star
"Panthea Reid's ten-year odyssey in writing a definitive biography of this enigmatic woman has been long awaited by western literature and history scholars alike. Tillie Olsen will delight readers."
~Western American Literature