Katharine Smyth is an American memoirist, most known for writing All The Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf, a memoir about her father's death as well as literary criticism of Virginia Woolf's 1927 novel To the Lighthouse.
[2] Her mother, Minty, was Australian, and her father, Geoffrey, was an English architect and a co-founder of the architecture magazine Clip-Kit.
Bethanne Patrick, writing for TIME, said, "Blending analysis of a deeply literary novel with a personal story is a high-wire act for many reasons, not least being how few readers will have read Woolf themselves.
But Smyth...is up to the challenge, gently entwining observations from Woolf’s classic with her own layered experience.
"[4] Francesca Wade, writing for Prospect, noted the book's "raw and moving prose"[3] and called it "painful to read, but not banal,"[3] as well as "elegant and powerful.