Biographies are often unavoidably fictionalised accounts, given they must condense a human lifetime into relatively few pages. The opening part here, covering the earlier years of Sonia Davis’ life, indeed reads like fiction, from details probably gleaned only much later, coupled with her recollections of a few key incidents. This impression is enhanced as Sonia wished the text to be written in the third person. Once we pass beyond her formative years, however, the text becomes increasingly fascinating, as a record of her life and times, including contradictions and uncertainties. Most here will probably expect to find their greatest interest concerning her time in close connection to H P Lovecraft. This though needs to be seen in the context of the work and her life as a whole, both for the insight it provides from a different perspective on Lovecraft, and indications of what attracted her to him in the first place, which latter is more obvious in the part dealing with her later marriage to Nathaniel Davis. The narrative is often disjointed, unsurprising, given segments are derived from different written sources composed at various times, some of which have never been previously published. Editor Monica Wasserman has done an excellent job in compiling the materials into this book as coherently as she has, along with invaluable footnotes, references and an annotated timeline. Highly recommended to anyone seeking greater detail on Lovecraft, and of course, Sonia Davis herself.
