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Title: So close yet so far
Review: Richard Sewall skillfully amasses a large shuffling pile of letters promising insight into the true Emily Dickinson. Starting the book left me hopeful for great things to come. He methodically, almost puritanically, reviews the lives surrounding and including the Dickinson family piling the letters upon each other. Yet, in the end, what possibly made Emily Dickinson withdraw into her room and from the world? Forced to abandon suitors by her Father, rejection by Sue after a brief gay encounter, agoraphobia? Any and all possibilities are buried under the letters and placed in obscure footnotes at best. Emily Dickinson is possibly the greatest poet from North America, and probably was a Gandhi-like reincarntion for the feminist movement in the United States; yet "The Life of Emily Dickinson" doesn't deliver through Richard Sewall's storm of letters.
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