But it soon emerges that the writer is giving a lurid account of her periods – and this is what first reveals that the “I” of this autobiography is female, not as Masters had originally assumed, male. All the talk of blood in the diaries at first makes Masters suspect a dreadful crime, slashed wrists or at least a nasty fall through panes of glass. Early on in the series it is menstruation that is the dominating topic. Volume after volume documents the writer’s changing, and not entirely attractive, obsessions and complaints. What Masters finds, as he reads, is a life that has been “discarded” in more ways than one. What is he to do with the millions of words that are the raw materials for the life story of someone who is quite literally nameless? His project in this book is more ambitious. In Stuart: A Life Backwards he brilliantly traced the life of a homeless alcoholic in Simon: The Genius in my Basement he told the story of his one-time landlord, a mathematical prodigy, who turned into a messy recluse and fanatical collector of public transport timetables. Masters has a distinguished record in exploring the biographies of the ordinary and the forgotten.
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