An homage to a couture icon whose influence is still powerful today.
An admiring portrait of the designer who first modernized women’s wear, told in the first person as she looks back over her life.
Gabrielle Chanel came from humble beginnings: Her father, a peddler, abandoned his two sons and three daughters after their mother died, and she and her sisters were taken in by nuns. Eventually, an aunt offers the Chanel sisters a home, where they help with the family millinery business. Chanel soon tires of slaving in a shop and seeks her fortune as a cafe chanteuse with the stage name Coco. A wealthy lover, Balsan, launches her career in fashion: She designs hats for his friends, courtesans from the Paris demimonde. At a race track, she meets Arthur Capel, aka “Boy,” who will prove to be the love of her life. With his help, she opens a Paris atelier. Departing from belle epoque corsets and bustles, Chanel’s first designs, separates based on menswear with a neutral palette and a slim silhouette, catch on almost immediately with rich women in Paris, Deauville, Biarritz and beyond. Coco amasses great wealth and makes friends among the artistic elite of France, including Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso and Serge Diaghilev. After World War I, Boy dies in a car crash, and Coco becomes even more driven. She develops a scent, Chanel No. 5, derived from the signature perfume of the assassinated czarina of Russia, and signs a contract to distribute it worldwide. As more lovers, among them an impoverished Romanov and the Duke of Westminster, enter and depart her life, she builds a lavish house in southern France and enjoys a brief sojourn in Hollywood. In her 50s as World War II and the Nazi occupation of France loom, Coco ponders her legacy and her perennially single state. Though the book is well-written and historically accurate, dramatic tension would have been better served if the fictional Coco could have demonstrated a few more character flaws and human foibles rather than being so very competent in meeting every challenge.
An homage to a couture icon whose influence is still powerful today.Pub Date: March 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-235640-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.
Crandall (Sleep No More, 2010, etc.) delivers big with a coming-of-age story set in Mississippi in 1963 and narrated by a precocious 9-year-old.
Due in part to tradition, intimidation and Jim Crow laws, segregation is very much ingrained into the Southern lifestyle in 1963. Few white children question these rules, least of all Starla Caudelle, a spunky young girl who lives with her stern, unbending grandmother in Cayuga Springs, Miss., and spends an inordinate amount of time on restriction for her impulsive actions and sassy mouth. Starla’s dad works on an oil rig in the Gulf; her mother abandoned the family to seek fame and fortune in Nashville when Starla was 3. In her youthful innocence, Starla’s convinced that her mother’s now a big singing star, and she dreams of living with her again one day, a day that seems to be coming more quickly than Starla’s anticipated. Convinced that her latest infraction is about to land her in reform school, Starla decides she has no recourse but to run away from home and head to Nashville to find her mom. Ill prepared for the long, hot walk and with little concept of time and distance, Starla becomes weak and dehydrated as she trudges along the hot, dusty road. She gladly accepts water and a ride from Eula, a black woman driving an old truck, and finds, to her surprise, that she’s not Eula’s only passenger. Inside a basket is a young white baby, an infant supposedly abandoned outside a church, whom Eula calls James. Although Eula doesn’t intend to drive all the way to Nashville, when she shows up at her home with the two white children, a confrontation with her husband forces her into becoming a part of Starla’s journey, and it’s this journey that creates strong bonds between the two: They help each other face fears as they each become stronger individuals. Starla learns firsthand about the abuse and scare tactics used to intimidate blacks and the skewed assumption of many whites that blacks are inferior beings. Assisted by a black schoolteacher who shows Eula and Starla unconditional acceptance and kindness, both ultimately learn that love and kinship transcend blood ties and skin color.
Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.Pub Date: July 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-0772-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A compulsively readable account of a little-known yet extraordinary historical figure—Lawhon’s best book to date.
A historical novel explores the intersection of love and war in the life of Australian-born World War II heroine Nancy Grace Augusta Wake.
Lawhon’s (I Was Anastasia, 2018, etc.) carefully researched, lively historical novels tend to be founded on a strategic chronological gambit, whether it’s the suspenseful countdown to the landing of the Hindenberg or the tale of a Romanov princess told backward and forward at once. In her fourth novel, she splits the story of the amazing Nancy Wake, woman of many aliases, into two interwoven strands, both told in first-person present. One begins on Feb. 29th, 1944, when Wake, code-named Hélène by the British Special Operations Executive, parachutes into Vichy-controlled France to aid the troops of the Resistance, working with comrades “Hubert” and “Denden”—two of many vividly drawn supporting characters. “I wake just before dawn with a full bladder and the uncomfortable realization that I am surrounded on all sides by two hundred sex-starved Frenchmen,” she says. The second strand starts eight years earlier in Paris, where Wake is launching a career as a freelance journalist, covering early stories of the Nazi rise and learning to drink with the hardcore journos, her purse-pooch Picon in her lap. Though she claims the dog “will be the great love of [her] life,” she is about to meet the hunky Marseille-based industrialist Henri Fiocca, whose dashing courtship involves French 75 cocktails, unexpected appearances, and a drawn-out seduction. As always when going into battle, even the ones with guns and grenades, Nancy says “I wear my favorite armor…red lipstick.” Both strands offer plenty of fireworks and heroism as they converge to explain all. The author begs forgiveness in an informative afterword for all the drinking and swearing. Hey! No apologies necessary!
A compulsively readable account of a little-known yet extraordinary historical figure—Lawhon’s best book to date.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-385-54468-9
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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