I spent most of my teens insatiably devouring anything by Catherine Cookson that I managed to lay my hands on. There was a certain something I felt, some inexplicable force at work that irresistibly drew me towards these stories and rendered them apart from everything else I'd ever read. This book had the effect of a jigsaw puzzle finally falling into place, answering all my questions and unveiling the mystery, larger than life, of Mrs. Cookson's poetics.
Drawing parallels between her own existence as a person and an artist, and that of big literary names such as Dickens and D.H. Lawrence, and, as she herself put it, "transposing her character into the characters in her books" beautifully in order to illuminate points of particular interest, this book simply joins the dots in a wonderful way, and paints a marvellous picture of the metamorphosis of the Girl from Leam Lane into a name lovingly issued from the lips of thousands of thankful fans.
Complete with stunning photographs of "wor Kate" throughout the years, this biography brings the magnetic, radiant person that she was to life as convincingly as she does her own characters. ( )

A dissection rather than an enjoyable story of the life of Catherine Cookson ( )