I'm writing my dissertation on Samuel Beckett and have chosen to look at his plays and poetry. So to start my summer reading I purchased this book as well as his dramatic works and biography.
Firstly, the books preface by the editor David Wheatley is very interesting. It talks about Beckett's influences his relationship with James Joyce and playfully draws parallels between his life and his plays,as well as the poetry. The bibliography is very helpful and I'll definitely revisit it when my research goes more in-depth when I'm back at uni and have narrowed down my subject area.
The book also includes a table of dates which is very helpful as the biography is 600 pages long. As much as I love Beckett 600 pages is too long when I'm working and have to read 17 other books as well. So the table of dates I can look at and then see in the biography and read chapters that cover those years and compare them that way. Which is a big help.
The book itself is well laid out chronologically and there is a lot of space on the page the type font is not small and there are some translations of his french poetry. The only problem I have is there isn't translations for most of the french poetry, apart from at the back of the book but the translations there are a little hard to allocate to which poem because they don't state a page number or poem title.
Over all the book was easy to read and contained some interesting poetry and helped me narrow down my options very quickly. It took me two days to read (because I broke it up into sections and analysed as I went a long).
3 out of 5
Thanks for reading,
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