Do not bother with this book. Any value it might once have had has evaporated with the very great increase in our knowledge of Tolkien's life and work.

Did you know Tolkien was born in South Africa and kidnapped as a child? An interesting look at the life of one of the last centuries great writers. ( )

Good biographical information on Tolkien without getting bogged down in minutiae. The book is less stellar when it comes to literary analysis, as the book was written without a lot of information from the posthumous works. ( )

Not bad, exactly, just forgettable.

What I liked best: Not too long, not too detailed, just enough to get a sense of what kind of man Tolkien was. Explanations of idiosyncrasies of English institutions that have puzzled me for years: Oxbridge university "system," Army regimental "system." Explanation of what the deal was with the first paperback edition. What Tolkien's professional/scholarly contributions were and why one hardly hears of them.

What I liked least: poor editing (dropped letters, misspellings); odd typeface (esp. letter spacing, punctuation & diacritical marks); repetition without further development; strange half-page text-boxing of the text; illustrations of scenes from Tolkien's fiction that have nothing to do with anything in this biography, and that are better suited for a young child's book of Mother Goose rhymes (esp. Rivendell; OMG that is an awful, sickly saccharine depiction).

What disappointed me: Grotta thinks Tolkien had a certain conception of the connection between language and myth, and that this connection is important to the broader meaning of Tolkien's fiction. But Grotta barely explains the connection or develops his argument about its significance.

What I couldn't care less about: Tolkien's ancestral history, difficulties of writing an "unauthorized" biography, growth of Tolkien fan clubs. ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1030238.html#cutid2

It is two-thirds the length of Carpenter's book, and one third the quality. Grotta admits rather grumpily (indeed, perhaps even peevishly!) that he was not given much access by the Tolkien family, but is gracious enough to recommend that the interested reader should get Carpenter's book as well - I doubt if Carpenter would have or indeed should have returned the compliment! For the non-British reader he offers perhaps a bit more external perspective on what England was like in the early twentieth century, and he has more of the detail on the Ace vs Ballantyne affair, but he makes several annoying errors of detail which make it difficult to really trust the rest of his findings. Also the book is irritatingly repetitive in places. I would hesitate even to recommend it for the completist. ( )