Grace Paley's Life Stories: A Literary Biography

Grace Paley, whose splendidly crafted collections of short stories ( The Little Disturbances of Man ; Enormous Changes at the Last Minute ; and Later the Same Day ) earned her a National Endowment for the Arts Senior Fellowship in 1987, among other prestigious literary awards, has always tapped the rich experiences of her own life as the basis for her fiction. In this engaging study, Arcana ( Every Mother's Daught e rs ) analyzes Paley's work in terms of its autobiographical roots, tracing her evolution from a wife and mother into a writer and social activist who embraced anti-Vietnam war protests, environmental and feminist causes, and eventually gay rights efforts. This scholarly but readable examination of Paley's life and work, for which Arcana enjoyed Paley's cooperation and drew heavily on interviews with the writer's friends, is marred only by Arcana's overly sympathetic attitude toward her subject. Photos not seen by PW. (Feb.)