Reading well, for Gregory of Nyssa, involved transferring or translating (metapherein) the virtues described in words into a life of virtue. And Gregory's biographies did not simply present raw data and then leave readers to “go and do likewise.” Gregory's texts taught readers how to read them and modeled the kinds of imitation they asked of their readers. Allison Gray argues that these biographies taught primarily through how they conformed to and broke from formal literary expectations. Gregory's biographies are encomiastic; praising subjects persuaded readers. This narrative genre, Gray shows, carried a standard storyline: birth, upbringing, education, great deeds, death, and comparisons; and the genre primed readers to ask specific questions about the conventional topics. A birth story asked how places of origin imprinted on subjects. Tales of upbringing raised questions around what of the protagonist is idiosyncratic and what is universal. To read about a praiseworthy person's education led readers to think about their own education. Gregory's biographies, therefore, trained readers in the art of interpretation; they disciplined readers to ask the right questions and “to see what matters” (155) in the saints, so readers could begin to see, and then be, that holiness in the world.

Current understandings of late ancient biography revolve around “two poles”: ethos and praxeis. Biographers revealed the “character” of their subjects through particular “deeds” to demonstrate general truths about how to live. To this, Gray adds a “third pole”: the audience (28). Biographers told stories to specific audiences to exhort them to universal virtues. Those stories created audiences. To read the stories well required cultivating an interpretive community that could “weave together a garment of virtues” from it. A biography, Gray argues, is not “a blueprint or straightforward path to virtue; rather, like a beacon, it simply marks out the path” (52). With that light, the community still has to sail.

Gregory wrote three biographies: one of his sister Macrina; one of Gregory the Wonderworker, the third-century bishop whom Gregory credits with bringing Christianity to Pontus; and one of Moses. The texts appear to have quite different structures, assumed settings, and ideal audiences, but Gray argues they “share a single biographical narrative genre.” (3). These stories should also be useful, and therefore understanding what they praise and how they persuade provides clues to what Gregory assumed of his audience and how he hoped they would become “ideal readers” (31). To answer, Gray structures the book around Aphthonius's rhetorical curriculum, which offer categories Gregory of Nyssa knew and used in each of his biographies: introduction and birth (chaps. 1–2), upbringing (chap. 3), education (chap. 4), actions (chaps. 5–6), death (chap. 7), and concluding comparisons. Gray highlights that the biographies share not only a similar set of plot points but also an emphasis on learning, specifically learning with “the three Rs of reading, revelation, and relationship” (118–123). Just as Macrina, Gregory, and Moses engage these modes of learning, so too should readers of biographies if they are to live well.

The book's close readings insightfully align and juxtapose the three biographies, and its contextualization of Gregory's literary and rhetorical world sparkles with gems from ancient sources. The book, however, leaves readers with some questions about how these biographies would have been read, who would have read them, and how they fit within a broader program of Christian formation. Most obviously, if advanced literacy rates were low and if reproducing texts was costly, what would reading look like? For most, “reading” involved replaying stories in the communal imagination, singing Psalms, and performing any “pious practice” that trained virtue (113). Attention to the formal features keeps modern readers distant from the nitty-gritty of how reading changed ancient lives, but, at its best, the book shows how the shape of the stories early Christians internalized molded their assumptions of the shape of a good life. Second, how can we account for the internal diversity of readers? Shared literary structure does not prove single meaning. Gregory populates his biographies with a range of characters. You may be no Macrina, but you can see yourself in her followers and imitate the virtue they display. You then have something to aspire to while also belonging to the community.

While the close-up on biographies allows for learned, detailed analysis, that tight focus hides as much as it reveals. Within the biographies, there are more differences than the book addresses both between the structure of the stories (for example, Moses's needs a literal and contemplative telling; the others do not) and within the plot points (for example, Macrina's education differs from that of the Wonderworker). Even readers convinced that the biographies share a genre may still wonder what is at stake in that classification. Gray scolds scholars for neglecting the genre uniting the three texts (12–15), but Gregory's biographies participated in a process of cultivating virtues that one genre did not contain. How did persuasion in the biographies relate to persuasion in the praise of the martyrs, or of Basil, or of Moses in other homilies? How does the Macrina of the Life relate to her in the dialogue On the Soul and Resurrection? Finally, how are the rituals and bodily actions implied in the Lives woven into that tapestry of virtues? The book draws a rather straight line between good interpretation and good living. Gray criticizes scholars such as Derek Krueger who emphasize how Lives led readers into a liturgical life and spiritual practice, which is where they locate ethical education. That view, Gray argues, underemphasizes how texts themselves teach ethics (217–219). Perhaps, however, those like Krueger better make Gray's strongest point: reading was but one part of a tapestry of formation; the “community” was the great teacher, and to understand the texts requires understanding their role in the community (242).