Simone de Beauvoir: The Woman and Her Work

This conversational and useful biography breaks little new ground, but it does offer an even-tempered and panoramic view of the life of a great thinker. Crosland's attempt to present de Beauvoir as a sensitive and in many ways traditionally feminine person--who, although she denied caring about her looks, always recorded what she and others wore and often burst into tears--are not completely convincing; but de Beauvoir's relationship with her sister, her childhood religious feelings and her development of a specifically feminist philosophy relatively late in life are well drawn. The personal material is more compelling than the analyses of each of de Beauvoir's books, which ring familiar. Crosland argues that de Beauvoir, while anti-bourgeois in theory, had to be prodded into action and was more content splitting hairs than she was protesting. She also places much emphasis on her subject's close childhood friendship with a classmate named Zaza. Anecdotes reveal that while the two had an intense bond, Zaza's family disdained de Beauvoir for her shabby clothing, and Crosland ( Piaf ) views this rejection as the starting point for her subject's class consciousness. Photos. (Dec.)