Getting a Life (on John Donne: The Reformed Soul by John Stubbs; Being Shelley: The Poet’s Search for Himself by Ann Wroe; Thomas Hardy by Claire Tomalin; Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee; Thomas Wolfe: When Do the Atrocities Begin? by Joanne Marshall Mauldin; and Bernard Malamud: A Writer’s Life by Philip Davis)

Greg Johnson, whose reviews have appeared regularly in our pages across many years, has published two novels, five collections of short stories, and several volumes of nonfiction. He lives in Atlanta and teaches in the graduate writing program at Kennesaw State University.