At first, Malcolm’s repeated return to this single period struck me as a bizarre narrowing of scope, especially given the grand aspirations implied by the title. However, this choice makes sense when one considers that both lives are, literally, open books. Through the Autobiography of Alice, Everybody's Autobiography, What is Remembered , Paris France &c, nearly every part of their lives is already detailed. Malcolm's challenge, then, is to find a new way to approach them. Her solution is to focus on Stein's refusal to, privately or public, acknowledge her Jewishness; and on her life during the second World War. The former thread never quite achieves the psychological depth Malcolm seems to be aiming for. The latter is quite a bit more interesting.

But wait! Wasn't her life in Nazi-occupied France detailed extensively in Wars I Have Seen? Yes, but what Stein never really confronted was the question of how she managed to survive there at all Malcolm is at her best when excavating this uncomfortable story: Stein leveraged her fame and cultivated relationships with collaborators in order to remain protected. Rather than flee when she, an American, still had the chance, she chose to stay, with a characteristic mixture of confidence, carelessness, and detachment.

For its treatment of this period alone, Two Lives ultimately redeems itself. It is also brief enough that I would still recommend it to readers interested in Stein, or in the possibilities and pitfalls of meta-biography more generally, though probably not to anyone else.