Maunsell presents a nuanced account of Sontags 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 Maunsells biography is that he makes sense of Sontags 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.
TLS
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 Sontags life.
Literary Review
The present clear, readable, and relatively brief biography, in Reaktions Critical Lives series, is the best available introduction to Sontags life. Maunsell pays extended attention to her work essays, novels, short stories, and films as well as her life.Recommended
Choice
Jerome Boyd Maunsells short biography covers both the life and the work [of Sontag] and integrates the two effectively . . . Maunsells book is highly readable, and, to date, is the best of the biographical writings.
Australian Book Review