Wednesday, 27th November 2002, 9:28pm
An opinion by: Nette

 

Lost Laysen by Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell requested that all her personal papers and writings be destroyed after her death, and as she died very early on after being hit by a car in Atlanta, there was no trace of her besides her phenomenally popular bestseller Gone With The Wind. This has added to the mystery that surrounded her life and I suppose Lost Laysen is a step to filling that void. Included here are love letters she wrote to one of her first boyfriends, Henry Angel, as well as pretty photos of Margaret and Henry together. He is the one responsible for squirrelling away her Lost Laysen story, a gift from Margaret when she was fifteen years old. Like the early writing of the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen, it is like reading someone's school exercises. While it is clear that Margaret will be a very good novelist one day, the story itself is more like an outline of a violent Harlequin romance, and the blatant racism is tiresome, even if we pretend to be generous enough to understand the historical context. Recommended for the most avid collectors only, and then only for the photos. The rest makes one cringe. I mean, hello!, she said destroy her papers!

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