An unusually grounded depiction of a business built largely on artifice.
The New York Times perfume critic—yes, you read that right—follows the creation of two industry-defining perfumes.
While Burr (The Emperor of Scent, 2003, etc.) approaches his beat with healthy skepticism, he’s also capable of flowery language, describing a perfume as smelling “like early evening on an island where it is always summer.” It’s this mixture of hard-nosed business writing and flights of olfactory fancy that makes the text improbably exhilarating. Split between the twin capitals of fashion, and therefore of the perfume industry, Burr’s account tracks the development of two new scents, each a high-stakes crapshoot. The New York fragrance was celebrity-driven. To create Sarah Jessica Parker Lovely, the actress spent an impressive amount of time with beauty-product manufacturer Coty’s corporate perfumers trying to create with a scent that would not only capture her essence (don’t laugh: they actually seem to have done it) but would survive in an increasingly volatile $31-billion market. Un Jardin sur le Nil, the more traditionally designed Parisian fragrance, was revolutionary in its own way. Seeking a higher profile in the lucrative perfume market, Hermès hired Jean-Claude Ellena, one of the professional “ghosts” who actually make the scents sold under designers’ names, to be its first-ever in-house perfumer. The astoundingly complex struggle to define and refine Nil, first reported by Burr in a 2005 New Yorker article, centered on an ephemeral conceit of green mangoes on the Nile. Lovely comes across here as a far more personal scent, though that might be a subjective judgment—the author seems a little star-struck by SJP. Nonetheless, Burr sharply evokes the intoxicating, often infuriating mix of precise science and artistic vision necessary to create a perfume, aided by his impressively calibrated BS detector and ability to unearth the industry’s many dirty little secrets.
An unusually grounded depiction of a business built largely on artifice.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8050-8037-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Everywoman's guide to her heart, crafted by a cardiologist (Legato) and a medical writer (Colman: Love and Money, 1982), whose combined expertise and skills have produced a highly informative and thoroughly readable owner's manual. Long more the concern of romantic poets than of medical researchers, the female heart is here taken very seriously indeed. Although coronary artery disease is the number-one killer of women in the country, relatively little research into it has focused on, or even included, female subjects. As patients, the authors reveal, women presenting symptoms of heart disease are taken less seriously than men—and when women undergo cardiac surgery, they are less likely than men to survive. In the face of this, Legato and Colman take a practical approach, giving women the information they need to understand not just the heart, healthy and otherwise, but circumstances unique to the female—the role of hormones in cardiac disease, the special problems of pregnancy and menopause, etc. Their discussion of risk factors is similarly aimed specifically at women, addressing such issues as the neglected care-giver and the overloaded working woman. The authors include a wealth of practical advice about self-care and prevention, understanding medical tests, recognizing the symptoms of heart disease and especially those of a heart attack, and recovering from a heart attack. Stories about Legato's patients serve as object lessons and are generally reassuring. Of special interest is a chapter on what a woman should realistically expect from her physician and what tests should be performed at what ages. Finally, an epilogue calls for both additional funding for heart-disease research and for increased responsibility by women for their own health. A welcome and very timely counterpart to the extensive literature available on heart disease in men. (Illustrations.)
Pub Date: Jan. 17, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-76110-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1991
A big, sprawling story of the fighters in the war against breast cancer, told by a journalist who seems unable to get a firm grip on her subject. Stabiner (Inventing Desire: Inside Chiat/Day, 1993, etc.), who has written for the New Yorker and other magazines, provides a revealing profile of the unconventional and headstrong breast surgeon Dr. Susan Love, whose UCLA Breast Center she visited daily from January to September 1994. Stabiner also offers compelling glimpses into the lives of seven of Love's patients. The conflicts between Love, a dedicated and outspoken activist, and her bosses at UCLA, who fear she is not dealing with the money-losing center's real problems, are adeptly outlined. If Stabiner had chosen to write a behind-the-scenes account of the Breast Center, she could claim success. Through her account, we learn a great deal about the unpredictable nature of the disease, the terrible decisions women must make, and the woefully imperfect weapons that doctors are equipped with. When it comes to the larger war on cancer, however, Stabiner skimps. Although she interviewed numerous government officials, clinicians, lobbyists, fund-raisers, and medical researchers, their stories seem oddly disjointed and incomplete. The changes in how breast cancer research is being funded, the search for the breast cancer gene and its therapeutic implications, the impact of managed care on breast cancer treatment—these are issues that deserve more thoughtful consideration in a work that purports to be giving the big picture. Unfortunately, Stabiner seems to be more interested in personalities than in the issues at stake here. Delivers less than it promises, but the punch it has is still a strong one.
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-385-31284-9
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1997
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