The Man in the Willows, Dennison | 352 pages

I recently re-read The Wind in the Willows with my kids - a fabulous adventure with anthropomorphized animals living by The River. It parallels The Odyssey in a British pastoral, nostalgic setting. When I saw this biography of the author Kenneth Grahame at the library, I grabbed it to get more background on this beloved story.

And oh, how unexpected this was. Grahame's life is nothing short of a tragedy from childhood on. His mother died, his father was absent, the various guardians overseeing his upbringing were in turns demanding and indifferent. He basically had Peter Pan syndrome, trapped in childhood and not progressing into adult ways of thinking. He was a bachelor afraid of women until he was pressured into an unhappy marriage in his 40s. They only had one child; the stories that became Willows were bedtime stories to their son he called Mouse. They were his escape from reality... his Neverland where he never had to grow up.

It was slow read and a sad one. Life is hard. All I'm left with is feeling sorry for Grahame and it puts a damper on my love for Willows, knowing the sorrow that lays behind Dennison did a good job incorporating quotes from books and letters; it's a well written biography all around. I just can't like it enough to give it more stars.