"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
So what was the "terrible homosexualist" society photographer doing with "the divine" actress? Amateur psychologists, sharpen your pencils. Diana Souhami wisely does not allow herself to extemporise too wildly despite the understandable allure of such an alliance. Along with the Scandinavian shoulders and paddle feet, Garbo also possessed a Nordic cold melancholy, rendering her screen portrayals attractively distant and her own self frustratingly absent. The truth was that she did not possess a character to match her undoubted grace and beauty, however hard one tried to impose one and, boy, people did. Beaton, on the other hand, was instinctively bright and bursting with desire to be adored, matching her indolence with bustling industry, like an early sketch for Jeffrey Archer. At times, particularly in the recounting of his early days, his obnoxiousness borders on the unbearable and Souhami barely conceals her disgusted glee, but she is a superb at reining in such characters, as she showed in Gertrude and Alice, and thrives on the challenge of eliciting respect for the sheer indomitable life force of such individuals.
Beaton pursued the artificial throughout his life and nothing could be more superficial than the hollow idealised self he saw in Garbo through the lens of a camera and pursued in the flesh. Yet all the while, as the years passed, and the notion, absurd yet not quite ridiculous, of marriage to Garbo faded, his mother, the early subject of his obsessive imagination, grew old, drunken and demented at his home in England, his picture of Dorian Gray by proxy.
Absence pervades every quality of this book, physically, emotionally and sexually, and it is a quality which Souhami seems to intuitively understand and allows to provide its own chastening commentary on those it envelops. Her sympathetic and shrewd attentions coax a tragic and complicatedly familiar story from two masters of illusion who are united, then estranged, by their lonely natures, uncomfortable in their own skins, but ultimately unable to live in each other's. --David Vincent
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Seller Inventory # DADAX0062508296
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. New. Fast Shipping and good customer service. Seller Inventory # Holz_New_0062508296
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. New. Seller Inventory # Wizard0062508296
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. New Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed. Seller Inventory # think0062508296
Book Description Condition: new. Seller Inventory # FrontCover0062508296
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Seller Inventory # Abebooks78786
Book Description Condition: New. New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title! 1.35. Seller Inventory # Q-0062508296