Brendan Behan: A Life

Rating:
Summary: A Weak Effort
Review: Brendan Behan was no literary giant, but he deserves better than this -- poorly and pompously written, indifferently edited, riddled with factual errors (outrageous, considering the research), and lacking in perception and depth. In addition, the author's obsession with Behan's supposed homosexuality is wearisome. Behan isn't important enough to be on the receiving end of a top-flight definitive biography, but it's too damned bad that this is as close as he'll come.

Rating:
Summary: Chronicles a talented writer's near-legendary life
Review: Brendan Behan: A Life chronicles a talented writer's near-legendary life and illustrates why Behan became one of Ireland's most celebrated artists. Compiled from a wide variety of sources which included prison documents, interviews with family and friends, editors and contemporaries, biographer Michael O'Sullivan was able to present a lucid and vivid introduction to the complex personal world of a genuine literary genius. Brendan Behan: A Life is a "must" for those who appreciate the contributions, influence and work of this unusual and gifted literary figure of modern Irish literature.

Rating:
Summary: Perceptive, Honest and Well Written.
Review: The particular achievement of this fine book, is to extractBrendan Behan from the mire of mythology in which he has been sofirmly placed since his death in 1964 at the age of 41. No easy task for any author given Behan's own willful contribution to the process. It deals fairly and honestly with Behan's homosexual leanings and does so in a non judgemental way using the evidence available rather than mere speculation. It is perceptive and the writing is as, Jack Helbig describes it in Booklist, 'graceful and forceful'. Behan was long over due such a biography.