A really interesting and frankly relatable pursuit of lesbian history--Shapland moves in and out of the archives and reflects on her own role in shaping the narrative she writes. Sometimes it felt like.... we spent too much time on Shapland's own need for McCullers to be a lesbian (which, maybe the justification is for straight people, but as like a queer historian, honey I get it,) and to some degree I want there to be like less apology for this. 

I think this could be a really great book club book to be honest--it certainly gave me a lot of reactions, and I think also might be useful in a classroom for ways of writing personal narrative and biography as a genre. I also learned a lot about McCullers's life, when I'd really only encountered her as like a nascent gay writer, so that was cool. But yeah I also have a lot of questions about some history aspects which are more about like personal beefs re: history as a practice than really a calling into question Shapland's methods. (Queer historians are out here! Doing the work! Pushing back against the smoking dick method! Have been for a while! Sorry you've only run into straight biographers!) 

But as I said, a good and interesting read, really useful in the classroom and a good book club read! So for sure check it out if you're interested in like queer histories (but understand the work "historians" is doing when she talks about them, I guess.)