"Samuel Beckett’s famously abstract and bleakly skeptical work can seem to be at odds with the underlying assumptions of traditional biography. For at the very least such biography affirms that its subject’s life is capable of being presented as a more or less coherent narrative; a narrative, moreover that is worth telling. Yet the main characters of Beckett’s plays tend to have grave doubts about not only the value but even the possibility of telling their own life stories. . . .  Andrew Gibson’s new biography distinguishes itself from the competition (including Alvarez’ short, somewhat impressionist sketch, as well as the more traditional, detailed works of Cronin and Knowlson) by being acutely sensitive to this problem. Clearly something of a Beckettian himself, Gibson sets himself the ambitious task of narrating Beckett’s life ’in more Beckettian terms’. . . . Gibson’s Beckett appears finally as a late romantic in an unromantic age, fundamentally concerned with remote possibilities of secular transcendence."

Metapsychology Online Reviews

“[The book] undoubtedly sheds light on the historical circumstances that informed [Beckett’s] texts, and there are many interesting details that allow us to see his literary achievement more clearly.”

Times Literary Supplement

“This new biography . . . considers the writer’s work in relation to the historical circumstances of his life and provides an original insight into one of Ireland’s greatest writers.”

Irish Post