Review: Madame Picasso

Publication Date: August 26, 2014
Publisher:  Harlequin MIRA
Formats: eBook, Paperback

Genre: Historical Fiction

Acquired:  Through Historical Fiction Virtual Tours 

Teaser: 

When Eva Gouel moves to Paris from the countryside, she is full of ambition and dreams of stardom. Though young and inexperienced, she manages to find work as a costumer at the famous Moulin Rouge, and it is here that she first catches the attention of Pablo Picasso, a rising star in the art world.  A brilliant but eccentric artist, Picasso sets his sights on Eva, and Eva can’t help but be drawn into his web. But what starts as a torrid affair soon evolves into what will become the first great love of Picasso’s life. 

Praise for Madame Picasso

“Early twentieth century Paris and Picasso’s lost love come to enchanted, vivid life in Madame Picasso. With a deft eye for detail and deep understanding for her protagonists, Anne Girard captures the earnest young woman who enthralled the famous artist and became his unsung muse.” – C.W. Gortner, bestselling author of THE QUEEN’S VOW

About the Author:

Anne Girard was born with writing in her blood. The daughter of a hard-driving Chicago newsman, she has always had the same passion for storytelling that fueled his lifelong career. She hand-wrote her first novel (admittedly, not a very good one) at the age of fourteen, and never stopped imagining characters and their stories. Writing only ever took a backseat to her love of reading.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in English literature from UCLA and a Master’s degree in psychology from Pepperdine University, a chance meeting with the acclaimed author, Irving Stone, sharply focused her ambition onto telling great stories from history with detailed research. “Live where your characters lived, see the things they saw,” he said, “only then can you truly bring them to life for your readers.” Anne took that advice to heart. After Stone’s encouragement twenty years ago, she sold her first novel. When she is not traveling the world researching her stories, Anne and her family make their home in Southern California. When she is not traveling or writing, she is reading fiction.

Anne also writes historical fiction under the name Diane Haeger. For more information, visit www.dianehaeger.com. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

My thoughts:  You didn't think that I wasn't going to actually review the book did you? I want to thank Amy Bruno from Passages to the Past and HFVBT for inviting me to participate in the blog tour for this fantastic book.  When I received the email from Amy, my first thought was "I'm not really fond of Picasso as an artist or as a person," but I've read Anne's previous books written under the name Diane Haeger and enjoyed them. She was even kind enough to be interviewed during the early days of the blog, so I thought 'why not?' I adore Paris and this book takes place in an intriguing time in the city's history, just before the start of WWI.  Mata Hari and Isadora Duncan were taking the city by storm with their innovative dance performances.  And the book involved scenes at the Moulin Rouge with a young Maurice Chevalier.  Sold!

I was charmed from the very first paragraph when Eva shows up late for her appointment at the Moulin Rouge but manages to talk her way into a job working as a wardrobe assistant.  I wasn't sure that I was going to like Eva, at first she seems a bit timid and uncertain of herself but Paris begins to work its magic on her, and she slowly grows as a person and as a character. She changes her name from Eva Gouel to Marcelle Humbert to sound more Parisian, to leave behind the provincial girl from the provinces. Almost immediately she meets a charismatic artist who turns out to be Picasso.  

I confess that some of my feelings about Picasso stem from the Merchant-Ivory movie starring Anthony Hopkins hamming it up as a middle-aged Picasso.  That Picasso was at the height of his fame and was a total asshole, especially to women. Girard gives us a glimpse at the young Picasso, just about to turn thirty, who after years of hardship is finally making a name for himself as an artist.  This Picasso has just begun experimenting with Cubism. I liked this Picasso, he's still in touch with his roots in Spain, but he's known tragedy.  His younger sister and his best friend have died, and he feels their loss keenly. 

What I liked about this story was that both characters were flawed.  Eva is feisty but she's also a bit of a martyr.  At first I thought that she was going to be a totally passive character who just allows things to happen to her, who gets swept away in a grand romance with Picasso. I liked the fact that she tried to respect Picasso's relationship with Fernande Olivier, even though the passion between her and Picasso was so strong. I also liked the fact that Picasso, although he loved Eva, still had the decency to not want to hurt Fernande even though the relationship was dying. He didn't just chuck her out, he had moments where he reflected on how much they had gone through together. 

In Girard's hands, the world of the Moulin Rouge and the South of France come alive in vivid colors like one of Picasso's paintings.  Seriously, after reading this book, all I wanted to do was hop on a place to Paris to walk in Picasso and Eva's footsteps. Reading this book was like taking a master class in historical fiction.  She doesn't overload the reader with details about the clothes or furniture, she focuses more on the emotions of the characters and how they react to having a new dress or moving into new flat. The experience of getting into a motorcar for the first time. Of course, all the usual suspects are here, Gertrude Stein and her life partner Alice B. Toklas (who actually comes alive in this book and is not just wallpaper or an appendage to Stein), Mistinguett, Matisse and Guillaume Appolinaire.  

Books about real people can be tricky. Particularly when the real-life person has so many famous friends. It can sometimes feel like dropping names into a story. For the most part Girard avoids that trap. There was a moment at Gertrude Stein's apartment where it felt a little name-droppy but that couldn't be helped. The best parts of the book are of course the intimate scenes between Picasso and Eva.  I don't know if Eva really was the love of Picasso's life, but Girard certainly made me feel as if she was.  Eva seemed to understand him in a way that Fernande Olivier didn't. Particularly in the last 1/3 of the book. Girard even made me feel for Olivier who could have come across as just the scorned girlfriend or a bitch, but Girard reveals the layers beneath the surface. Girard points out that life wasn't plain sailing for Eva and Picasso, that their relationship had consequences, friendships were lost. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I was sad when I finished it. I could have cheerfully spend more time with Eva and Picasso.

Review: Daisy Goodwin's The Fortune Hunter

Author:  Daisy Goodwin
Publisher:  St. Martin's Press
Pub Date:  July 29, 2014
How acquired:  New York Public Library

What it's about:  Empress Elizabeth of Austria, known as Sisi, is the Princess Diana of nineteenth-century Europe. Famously beautiful, as captured in a portrait with diamond stars in her hair, she is unfulfilled in her marriage to the older Emperor Franz Joseph. Sisi has spent years evading the stifling formality of royal life on her private train or yacht or, whenever she can, on the back of a horse.

Captain Bay Middleton is dashing, young, and the finest horseman in England. He is also impoverished, with no hope of buying the horse needed to win the Grand National—until he meets Charlotte Baird. A clever, plainspoken heiress whose money gives her a choice among suitors, Charlotte falls in love with Bay, the first man to really notice her, for his vulnerability as well as his glamour. When Sisi joins the legendary hunt organized by Earl Spencer in England, Bay is asked to guide her on the treacherous course. Their shared passion for riding leads to an infatuation that jeopardizes the growing bond between Bay and Charlotte, and threatens all of their futures.

The Fortune Hunter, a brilliant new novel by Daisy Goodwin, is a lush, irresistible story of the public lives and private longings of grand historical figures.

My thoughts: I had read Daisy Goodwin's previous novel, The American Heiress, about the 19th Century American 'dollar princesses' who took England by storm, many of them marrying titles. So I was intrigued when I heard the author say, at the Historical Novel Society conference, that her next book would be about the Empress Elisabeth of Austria.  I have long had a fascination for Sisi ever since I first saw the Winterhalter portrait, and I previously wrote about her several years ago.  What would Goodwin make of the Empress who was famous for not wanting to be photographed, who shared the 21st century mania for preserving her looks as long as possible?

For the most part I enjoyed this novel immensely.  Goodwin has a keen eye for the manners and mores of the 19th century.  Charlotte is an intriguing heroine, who is incredibly self-aware, yet still has romantic dreams of marrying for love.  She knows that she is not a beauty, she doesn't excel at small talk, but she is an heiress. I liked the fact that the author gives her a keen interest in photography which was just starting to take hold amongst the middle and upper classes. In many ways, Charlotte's camera reveals things to the reader and to Charlotte that cannot be articulated. 

Goodwin also does an excellent job portraying the Empress, her loneliness, her obsession with her looks, with her need to escape the boredom and frustration with her life and the imperial court in Vienna. Elisabeth (or Elizabeth as she's called in the novel) is also selfish, and self-absorbed, incapable for the most part of seeing outside herself, and her own needs. She's willful and capricious, but also captivating, able to charm when she needs to. Both Sisi and Charlotte fall in love with Bay Middleton, the Fortune Hunter of the title. Bay is a Calvary officer of limited means, who also happens to be an expert horseman. His abilities with horses are what bring him into the orbit of the Empress. 

One of the things that I really enjoyed about the book was the way that Goodwin conveyed the difficult choices faced by both Charlotte and Bay.  While Charlotte is an heiress, and has more choices than other woman of her class who smaller or no dowries, she is still bound by the rules of Victorian England, no matter how much they may chafe. Until she reaches her majority, she can't marry without her brother's permission, nor can she pursue a career as a professional photographer. She must use her own intuition to discover whether or not her suitors are interested in her or her fortune.  She believes that in Bay Middleton, she has found someone who genuinely cares for her. I loved that Charlotte took action, instead just observing or having things happen to her. Bay, on the other hand, has to survive by his wits and his ability with horses. As a Calvary officer in regiment that has the Prince of Wales as colonel-in-chief, he would have to keep up appearances. Being an officer cost money.  

Now to what I didn't like. (SPOILER ALERT)  I'm not sure why it was necessary to anglicize the Empress's name from Elisabeth.  And Bay's given name for some reason is given as John instead of William George. Also the book condenses the five year relationship between Bay and the Empress to one hunting season. In reality, Bay and Charlotte became engaged in 1875 and didn't marry until 1882. The book opens with Bay reeling from the end of his love affair with Blanche Hozier, and the knowledge that she's pregnant with his child, the future Clementine Churchill.  However, in real life not fiction, Clementine wasn't born until 1884, during his marriage to Charlotte. 

I didn't have a problem with the condensing of the timeline of Bay's relationship with Sisi. I get that the author probably had a word count, and that it was much easier to give the essence of their relationship in a short time span. What bothered me the most was the ending of the novel. It felt like the ending of a romantic film, you could almost hear the music swelling, and novel rushed towards its climax.  It just felt wrong, and unearned, at least by Bay.  It also felt a little cliched. I felt let down after, what had been up until the last two or three chapters, a excellent example of the best kind of historical fiction. One that sweeps you up wholeheartedly into the world that the characters live in. 

August Book of the Month: Women Heroes of World War I

Title:  Women Heroes of World War I - 16 Remarkable Resisters, Soldiers, Spies and Medics

Author:  Kathryn J. Atwood

Publisher:  Chicago Review Press (June 1, 2014)

Pages:  254

From the back cover:  A commemoration of brave yet largely forgotten women who served in the First World War

In time for the 2014 centennial of the start of the Great War, this book brings to life the brave and often surprising exploits of 16 fascinating women from around the world who served their countries at a time when most of them didn’t even have the right to vote. Readers meet 17-year-old Frenchwoman Emilienne Moreau, who assisted the Allies as a guide and set up a first-aid post in her home to attend to the wounded; Russian peasant Maria Bochkareva, who joined the Imperial Russian Army by securing the personal permission of Tsar Nicholas II, was twice wounded in battle and decorated for bravery, and created and led the all-women combat unit the “Women’s Battalion of Death” on the eastern front; and American journalist Madeleine Zabriskie Doty, who risked her life to travel twice to Germany during the war in order to report back the truth, whatever the cost. These and other suspense-filled stories of brave girls and women are told through the use of engaging narrative, dialogue, direct quotes, and document and diary excerpts to lend authenticity and immediacy. Introductory material opens each section to provide solid historical context, and each profile includes informative sidebars and “Learn More” lists of relevant books and websites, making this a fabulous resource for students, teachers, parents, libraries, and homeschoolers.

My thoughts:  I picked up a copy of this book at the library and devoured it in one night.  It's the perfect book for young readers or even adults who want to know about more WWI through a woman's perspective.  Most of these women I had never heard of apart from Edith Cavell and Mata Hari (who I wrote about on the blog as well as in Scandalous Women). These women are fascinating.  Thanks to the publishers at Chicago Review Press for their series Women of Action, of which this book is part of. The book also has a handy bibliography in the back for further reading.