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The Books Briefing: How to Tell the Story of a Family

Feuding brothers, possessive aunts, and honest discussions: Your weekly guide to the best in books
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The poet Marianne Moore had a deeply close—perhaps too close—relationship with her mother, Mary. This idiosyncratic bond intrigued Moore’s contemporaries and her biographer Linda Leavell, who trains her eye on it in . As Leavell writes, the poet’s mother could be cruel (she made marriage impossible for her, serving as a confidante and an attentive editor.

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