Transcendence for Beginners

Reviews / Votes

'We can make our own shape out of [Carlisle's] words because she is never dogmatic and because she is clearly on an open-ended quest herself. All possibilities remain alive in this subtle, generous and humane book.'

- Sarah Bakewell, Guardian 'Spanning continents and centuries, traversing mountains and seas, this expansive book asks what it means for a philosopher, or a biographer, to work from life. Carlisle's beautiful prose fizzes with illuminating questions, stories and, above all, human connections, as she maps out a powerful and moving "philosophy of the heart."'

- Francesca Wade, author of Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife 'This is the book of a lifetime, and a book about lifetimes. What is the relationship between philosophy and biography? How can a line of writing reveal a line of living? Clare Carlisle is a guide and a guru: Transcendence for Beginners is a transformative and transcending experience'

- Frances Wilson, author of Electric Spark 'A book of great intricacy and grace. Clare Carlisle is able to look upon the physics of literature, narrative and being as a scientist might look upon the constellations, giving us both understanding and wonder.'

- Jessica Au, author of Cold Enough for Snow 'In this elegant, eloquent, elegiac book, Clare Carlisle describes the movements of other lives, as well as those of her own life, that open paths to understanding what it means to live a life of devotion. This is philosophy as rigorously thought, but also as felt and lived. In an era marked by rampant cruelty and selfishness, Transcendence for Beginners offers its readers various modes of the radiant life, one that embraces joy but can also navigate loss and grief in that strange flux of being we call "time."'

- Siri Hustvedt, author of Mothers, Fathers and Others 'A wide ranging and surprisingly moving examination of what it is to have, and live, a life.'

- Jessie Greengrass, author of The High House 'By taking the discussion on life-writing away from genre towards, instead, philosophical histories of the self, this book makes a powerful case for rethinking life-writing's significance. In the process, it both explores remembering and remembers, doing both with an often startling critical intelligence as well as with surprising emotional immediacy.'

- Amit Chaudhuri, author of Sojourn 'A work of thrilling lucidity and substance, on the singularity of lives and the value of life-writing, in which Clare Carlisle shows herself to be the most companionate of thinkers, gifted with uncommon modesty and intellectual grace. A book to read slowly, talk about, savour and learn from.'

- Claire Harman, author of All Sorts of Lives 'Transcendence for Beginners is a brilliant book - one of the most intelligent and sophisticated meditations on life-writing I've ever read, as well as a powerful demonstration of what the best life-writing can do in practice. Carlisle approaches this "humble literary genre" in the fullness of its ethical dimensions.'

- Edmund Gordon, author of The Invention of Angela Carter 'The Marriage Question already has the stamp of a classic and is bound to enter the canon of great biographies. I was amazed by the clarity of Clare Carlisle's language; she deals with the most complex ideas with miraculous ease. It was a delight to read while at the same time being deeply thought-provoking. I'm already looking forward to reading this magnificent book again.'

- Celia Paul, author of Letters to Gwen John (praise for The Marriage Question) 'Finally, Eliot has got the biographer she deserves, namely an ardent and eloquent feminist philosopher who shows us how and why Eliot's books, rightly read, are as philosophically profound as any treatise written by a man.'

- Stuart Jeffries, Observer (praise for The Marriage Question) 'Clare Carlisle's The Marriage Question is the best book I've read on George Eliot.'

- John Carey, Sunday Times (praise for The Marriage Question) 'Eloquent and original ... [Carlisle] combines a biographer's eye for stories with a philosopher's nose for questions.... Masterly and enriching.... The deal historian [of marriage] will need great tact and an impious curiosity. Carlisle has both.'

- James Wood, New Yorker (praise for The Marriage Question) 'In this thrilling book, the academic philosopher Clare Carlisle explores the novelist's interrogation of "the double life", meaning not only Eliot's own 25 years of unsanctioned coupledom with Lewes, but also the difficult love relationships she unleashed on her heroines.... Carlisle speaks of wanting to employ biography as philosophical inquiry and here she succeeds magnificently. With great skill and delicacy she has filleted details from Eliot's own life, read closely into her wonderful novels and, most importantly, considered the wider philosophical background in which she was operating.'

- Kathryn Hughes, Guardian (praise for The Marriage Question) 'This book manages to be both engrossing and rigorous, inhabiting an intimate and expansive vision of creativity and the lived life. Following the pulsing and ever-vital questions of love, desire, compromise and companionship, The Marriage Question is both a thrilling work on Eliot and a probing, illuminating reflection on modern love.'

- Sean Hewitt, author of Open, Heaven (praise for The Marriage Question)