Christopher Byrne’s biography, “A Man of Much Importance,” is welcome on several counts. First, despite the choppy way that it consigns McNally’s plays, operas, and work for television to separate chapters, the book does offer an accurate overview of McNally’s life that’s surprising in some of its details. For example, while McNally had spoken publicly about his parents’ alcoholism and his father’s beating him for his artsy behaviors and sassy comebacks as he grew up in Corpus Christi, Byrne is the first to report that McNally’s mother “interfered” (Byrne’s word) with him during his teenage years, which perhaps explains the sexually troubled relationship between mothers and sons in his plays.

Given this relative neglect of his work, Raymond-Jean Frontain’s new book, The Theater of Terrence McNally: Something about Grace, is especially welcome. The culmination of many years of study of McNally’s work and of his voluminous papers at the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, the book offers an insightful assessment of the playwright’s entire career. Frontain makes the best case yet for the unity of McNally’s body of work and for the significance of his achievement.