This biography is unusual in my experience in that it comes across as an anti-hagiogrphic documentary. That does not take away from the exploration of significant details of the life of this famous author; however, the nastiness does bring into question the selection ans prioritization of events exlpored in relating the life of Wells. ( )

A harsh book and a direct one, which spares no time in letting you know precisely where it stands. Although I prefer a biography with a strong sense of narrative voice, this one comes dangerously close to being something else entirely. Coren dislikes Wells, although he suggests this only happened as a result of his research, and the book is very much geared toward Wells' human faults, which are many. The first half of the book (loosely) focuses on his use and abuse of an entire cavalcade of young women, among them two wives and a steady stream of mistresses, who were meant to support Wells' every high-minded belief and self-absorbed tendency. The second half throws into sharper focus his fascination with eugenics and the concept of a "higher order" beneficently but militantly controlling a lower one, with some final spirals into the specifics of his anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic polemics. Heavy stuff.

Wells' own works and letters are quoted to such an extent that it's very hard to deny Coren his thesis that Wells has, out of popular sentimentality, been afforded a rose-tinted tolerance the man didn't actually deserve. What Coren doesn't consider (and probably never meant to) is why a tiny, three-year patch of writing early in Wells' career - the years that gave us The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, and The Island of Dr. Moreau - so infused the public imagination with iconography that his memory has been kept alive through those same icons for the past seventy-five years. Those books take up a handful of pages, and as other reviewers have commented, some of his more gentle but lesser works have been ignored entirely to favor the controversial ones.

I have no real problem with taking down Wells the man, particularly as he seems to have repeated his social and ideological transgressions over and over again, fully aware of the pain he caused. But there are many authors, writers, and other creative people who are quite, quite brilliant in their own areas without being particularly nice human beings. For whatever reason, the work that they leave behind can have a positive, lasting legacy even though they are frail, flawed, even disturbing individuals. Coren's biography barely touches on that positive legacy, and so while his is an interesting book, it is hardly a definitive examination of wells. If nothing else, it needs to be read in tandem with other analyses, and without knowing what those should be, I think any reader will feel that the book is frustratingly incomplete. ( )

This is a book that shows many different sides to HG Wells.
He was a marxist, bigot, womaniser and a supporter of vivisection, but he also wrote some great books.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review ( )

Coren's book is prosecutorial in intent, rather than interpretive or informative. Important facts and passages bearing on his subject are passed over in silence while others are accumulated and presented with vehemently prejudicial comment. This book is not a reliable guide to Wells's views and willfully distorts the spirit that animates his work. Wells's most recent biographer, Michael Sherborne, points out how Coren often twists remarks to make them seem to mean the opposite. This mistreatment is all the more regrettable in that a fair-minded discussion of the subjects Coren discusses would be useful and welcome. ( )

Still trudging through it...and it's been over 3 years since I started it. Writing is a bit dry and the subject is shown to be a real bastard. It's interesting enough for me to finish it, but it is hard to read about a book about somebody you've learned to despise as a person. ( )