Jeff Bursey’s Reviews > Herman Melville: A Biography > Status Update

I had heard the style of telling in this bio made it a bit of a slog. You get used to it by about p300 of vol. 1. The bio perhaps should have been titled Herman Melville and Family. Sometimes Herman disappears from the text as we follow his brothers, sisters, and mother, and cousins, uncles, and aunts. What Parker does is weave together these things for the kind of context that is not present in most bios.