"A thorough and intriguing biography showing the relationship between all the threads in the life of a woman best known for *The Tale of Peter Rabbit* -- against a backdrop of late-Victorian England and two world wars.

Beatrix Potter comes across as a multitalented, sometimes ornery, independent spirit, constrained in youth by gender prejudice and her own quest for new experiences from going farther with cutting-edge research and illustration of mushrooms and fungi. (One hundred years after she proposed a way that certain spores propagated, her originally poo-poo-ed observations were proved correct.)

The stuffy "nonconformist" (Unitarian) household Potter grew up in kept her fairly lonely but not unhappy, as she explored nature and, encouraged by her father, drew everything in sight, including a remarkable menagerie of pets that went well beyond rabbits and hedgehogs to all sort of amphibians and bugs -- and was allowed to go everywhere with her on family vacations.

Potter's own ambition and pragmatism engendered a long relationship with Frederick Warne publishers, but the books sprang initially from the delight she took in writing fanciful letters with pictures to young friends, notably the children of a former governess.

As much as I loved the pictures, I have always felt most of the stories are too violent for young children, but the biography helped me understand that they spring from an unsentimental and realistic observation of nature, red in tooth and claw. And generations of children worldwide have not had my reservations.

When Potter's growing financial independence let her indulge her love of the countryside -- and farming took over her energies -- she began to buy land in the Lake District. The books then took a back seat, although new friendships with American admirers led to a few more publications, primarily in the *Horn Book* magazine.

At her death, 4,300 acres of fells farmland were added to her previous gifts of land to the National Trust, which then tried rather unsuccessfully to preserve the fells-farming way of life and the rugged Herdwick sheep Potter adored according to her instructions.

Author Linda Lear, who also has a biography of Rachel Carson under her belt, draws on Potter's extensive correspondence, and even her youthful diaries, written in code.

Children the world over cherished her, but Potter had no children of her own. Her first love died young. Her late-in-life marriage to Lakelands lawyer William Heelis was s strong and loving partnership. And she cultivated contact with children her whole life, including with generations of Girl Guides who camped on her land."

"This book confirmed something I’ve always believed: that one person, open to learning and thinking deeply about what is learned, can be the spark that ignites dramatic, positive change. Or, to use a favorite quote from a Pete Seeger song, "One and one and 50 make a million."

Jane Jacobs, a writer with an independent, ornery bent, is best known for "Death and Life of Great American Cities" and for triumphing over a New York City planning powerhouse called Robert Moses, who was once heard to fume that those opposing his neighborhood-destroying highway plans were nothing but a bunch of mothers.

Jane came from a Scranton family that encouraged independent thinking. She had a rough time at school, brilliant though she was, because she had a problem with rules and arbitrary pronouncements. In elementary school she convinced other students not to promise to brush their teeth every night for the rest of their lives because she knew that you should never make a promise that would be impossible to keep.

After high school and an internship at the local paper, she went to New York, gradually finding better and better writing jobs and being exposed to many fields. The last job before she became a full-time author of books was at "Architectural Forum," where she initially bought into the modernist styles and urban renewal approaches of the day.

On one assignment, she went to Philadelphia to see the great things that planner Edmund Bacon (father of Kevin, by the way) was doing in that city, and she came away with an uneasy feeling about the way whole communities were being wiped out to build "better" ones. Her uneasiness increased after she met William Kirk, who ran a settlement house in East Harlem. He took her on numerous walks around the neighborhood and explained the loss of community, friendships, businesses, and more that had resulted from the new and sterile "projects."

Meanwhile, she was living in the lovely, messy, interesting, and diverse neighborhood of West Greenwich Village. She could see what made for vitality.

One day her boss got invited to speak at the first ever Harvard design and community planning symposium. He couldn't go and suggested she take his place. She was terrified of public speaking but agreed to go if she could talk about what she wanted to, not the suggested topic. In the talk, she expressed her growing realization that planning was being done wrong. She created a sensation. Her best-known book followed, extolling further the delightful energetic mess from which wonderful neighborhoods and cities arise.

I liked this line from the biography: "The problems of metropolitan government would be solved 'not by abstract logic or elegance of structure, but in a combination of approaches, by trial, error and immense experimentation in a context of expediency and conflicting interests.' "

Biographer Robert Kanigel favors lots of italics and repetition of key points. He is very good at building up a crescendo. After reviewing her life, much of it in Toronto (where the family moved because the boys were about to be drafted), and her child-rearing (not terrific but encouraging of lively discussion), and her books, he concludes that her life and work was about more than preserving quirky streets. He puts it all under the category of "civilization" -- exploring what civilization consists of, how to preserve it, how to keep it blooming."

"You could say this wistful, ambiguous, sad story is about the consequences of not being able to make up your mind, or of trying to live simultaneously in a fantasy world and the real one. It is also about warm but smothering cultures (an Italian-American family, an Irish town) and how they sustain and damage their members. And it's about secrets.

Eilis Lacey, a character from a previous novel, returns to Ireland for the summer after her husband's Italian family embraces the idea of raising a baby he had by another woman. While in Ireland, Eilis meets up with a former beau, who has finally given up bachelorhood to become secretly engaged to Eilis's onetime best friend, Nancy. The two are keeping it secret in order to give Nancy's daughter a chance to shine at her own wedding. All you need to know about Nancy is that she has no problem making decisions.

I liked how Eilis's half-Italian teens blend in with the Irish community they have never visited. Their attachment to their "new" grandmother is nice, too, but presages trouble for Eilis when the grandmother mentions going back to America with them for a visit.

The way author Colm Tóibín gets into characters' minds, especially their indecisiveness, is skillful, but he didn't get me to like any of them or to care if they made a mess of things. As a fan of the Victorian writers, I'm afraid I'm old-fashioned enough to prefer things more clear cut. I would be grateful if the characters' moral choices did not strike me as sad and if they didn't seem to be basically getting even with others.

I am pretty sure most readers will not agree with me."

"I usually don't review books I read for pure escape, such as mysteries. I have always liked the Mary Russell series by Laurie King, but this one was my favorite. I don't want to give anything away, but if you like Sherlock Holmes and have read any of the books in this series, make sure not to miss this one. It was a very satisfying read."