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Title: The Art of Scandal: The Life and Times of Isabella Stewart Gardner by Douglass Shand-Tucci ISBN: 0-06-092977-4 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 November, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 1.65 (17 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: A fascinating narrative with a flawed style
Comment: What a shame this book is so poorly written. Isabella Stewart Gardner was a fascinating woman, and Shand-Tucci brings insight to her story, but the style is so intrusive as to be distracting.
Mrs. Jack, a New Yorker transplanted to Boston by marriage and alienated from the Brahmins by character, was often generous but not always kind. She acted as mentor and patron to outcasts of the time -- homosexuals, Jews, artists and (to a lesser extent) women -- but she was also quick to reject those she considered beneath her interest. She built Fenway Court, a truly unique and visionary museum, for the people of Boston; but she would also have her carriage park on the sidewalk in inclement weather even though many pedestrians were inconvenienced.
Furthermore, the enigmatic Mrs. Gardner destroyed many of her letters and papers shortly before her death, so the fact that Shand-Tucci's insightful speculations about her seem plausible is no small feat. That is why it is particularly tragic (perhaps too strong a word, but close) that the reader can never forget the presence of this heavy-handed narrator. Here is a sample sentence (page 158):
"Though stimulated by her patronage-Gardner was one of the first to see Loeffler not only as a virtuoso but as the composer he wished to be and increasingly today is regarded as-Loeffler grew to feel at one point distinctly imposed upon by Gardner, who seemed to him possessive and only too willing to "show him off" in Ralph Locke's words, as "a kind of in-house virtuoso" in the Gardner music room, all of this, or (sic) course, quite classic behavior on the part of humble but artful, trustworthy but vain, kind but cruel and rampagingly dominant Isabella!"
One can open the book to almost any page, as I did with this example, and find sentences as bad or worse. The jacket states that the author won an award for a previous book, but that is difficult to imagine. It is almost unreadable, and I put the book down twice before I finally finished reading it. On the other hand, it did make me want to revisit Fenway Court (now the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum) in Boston, so the content is great but the style is almost insurmountable.
Rating: 1
Summary: why oh why?
Comment: when i set out to write a research paper about Isabella Stewart Gardner, i decided to read her biographies. i opted to read them in chronological order, starting with Morris Carter's published in 1925. i was having a ball learning about such an interesting woman, until i got to the Shand-Tucci biography. this book confused me so much, not only because of it's writing style, but also because of it's content. Mr. Shand-Tucci presents information completely opposite to the info in Morris Carter and Louise Hall Tharp's biographies. these differences were so extreme that i ended up writing my research paper about them. no joke. three thousand words later, and i still feel i could write more on the faults of this book.
Just a side note, i talked to a friend who works at the Gardner Museum, and they stopped selling this biography in the museum shop because its allegations against Mrs. Gardner are so farfetched. if you want to read a good biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner, i highly recommend "Mrs. Jack" by Louise Hall Tharp.
Rating: 1
Summary: The sentences that never end...
Comment: I am an avid reader and I find the subject of Bella Gardner fascinating, and I was incredibly excited to find yet another book about her amazing life! Yet, little did I know that it would take me almost three weeks to slog through this terribly written piece! With little organization and darting from one thought to another, it is barely held together. But, dear reader, the worst is yet to come. Let me give you an example of just one of the "typical" sentences that make up the writing found within, and remember this is just one sentence: "Perhaps her most vivid counsel ever as muse and mentor, into which central venue of Isabella Gardner's life first James and then Crawford and now Sargent have conducted us, that advice reflects the fact that just as it has been argued of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's friendship with Arthur Hallam that although their relationship lasted a mere four years, those "four years probably [were] the equal in psychic importance to the other seventy-nine of Tennyson's life," so with act one of Gardner's and Crawford's affair, which lasted barely two years."
Now I realize how incredibly terrifying this is, and believe me, I have left punctuation, wording and phrasing exactly as they are found in the book. This is but one of three hundred pages of such dismal phrasing. Get the point...
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Title: Mrs. Jack: A Biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner by Louise Hall Tharpe ISBN: 0914660195 Publisher: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Pub. Date: 01 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Mrs Jack: An Autobiography of Isabella Stewart Gardner by Louise Hall Tharp ISBN: 0926637002 Publisher: Isabella Stewart Gardner Pub. Date: 01 June, 1984 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Mystic River by Dennis Lehane ISBN: 0380731851 Publisher: HarperTorch Pub. Date: 02 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Digital Fortress : A Thriller by Dan Brown ISBN: 0312263120 Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin Pub. Date: 05 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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