I liked this book a lot, but the actual biographical bits were more interesting than the philosophical bits. He also seemed to reuse some of Dickinson's quotes a lot, which struck me as strange. Additionally, many of the concluding paragraphs in each chapter said the same thing in different ways which annoyed me. It's like he only had one main point (despite the diversity of the chapter subjects), and felt the need to reiterate it frequently. ( )

This work, while well-researched, is not very readable. As a disclaimer, I must state that I read this in the Kindle version. I have no idea how the quotes were formatted in the original edition, but the manner in which quotes, particularly those featuring her poetry, had a lot of em dashes to indicate line breaks which made it not flow as well and which were distracting. I also felt that the author relied too much on quotations and did not analyze the material as much as he could have. While the author takes a look at Dickinson's use of the Bible and remarks on or alluding to faith in her letters and poems, there is no definitive answer to the question of whether or not she was really a believer or not. Doubt is shown at several times, but comfort in the Bible is taken at times as well. In the introduction, the author tells why he is placing source information in the back of the book and trying to leave the narrative free of cumbersome source citations. The book itself, however, begs for a more carefully sourced narrative because its audience is likely to be more of an academic than lay one. When we got to the end, there were numbered endnotes. The bibliography is quite extensive. There are several useful indexes. ( )