Synopses & Reviews
Wild Girls is the critically acclaimed true story of two wealthy American heiresses---one an artist, the other a writer---whose stormy, passionate love affair captivated Pariss salon set between the wars.
Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks were rich, American, eccentric, and grandly lesbian. They met in Paris in 1915, and their relationship lasted more than fifty years, despite infidelity, separation, and temperamental differences. Romaine Brooks, a painter, was the product of an unhappy childhood and trusted no one but Natalie. Natalie Barney was passionate about life, sex, and love. Her Friday afternoon salons, attended by Gertrude Stein, and Colette and Edith Sitwell, were a magnet for social introductions and cultural innovations.
Drawing from letters, papers, and paintings, Diana Souhami, the award-winning author of Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter, re-creates the lives and loves of this pair of dazzling and wild women.
Epic romance . . . smartly sex-positive and so good-naturedly shocking.”
---The New York Times Book Review
Real tenderness and pathos . . . not only entertaining but affecting reading.”
---The Washington Post
Their friends were the most bohemian, their parties the most risqué, their tortured love affair the most notorious in Europe. Diana Souhami tells a remarkable tale.”
---The Sunday Telegraph (UK) Diana Souhami is the author of many highly acclaimed books. The Trials of Radclyffe Hall was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Biography and won the U.S. Lambda Literary Award. Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter was a bestseller, and Selkirk's Island won the Whitbread Biography Award. She studied philosophy at Hull University in the U.K. during the 1960s, and she worked at the BBC and wrote plays and stories before writing her first book. Nominated for the Lambda Literary AwardNominated for the Judy Grahn Award The writer Natalie Barney and the artist Romaine Brooks were rich, American, energetic, and grandly lesbian. They met in Paris in 1915, and their relationship lasted more than 50 years, despite infidelity, separation, and temperamental incompatibility. Told by Diana Souhami, the critically acclaimed author of Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter, Wild Girls is the story of these dazzling, audacious women, their eccentric and scandalous friends and lovers, and the world they inhabited. Natalie Barney believed that living was "the first of all arts." She published memoirs and collections of poems and aphorisms, but her passion was for seduction and love. She liked lavish displays, lots of sex, and love unbounded by rules. At her Friday afternoon salons, in the Grecian Temple of Friendship in the garden of her Paris home, "one met lesbians." Lovers and friends circled the Amazon, as she was called. She aspired to make her temple the Sapphic center of the western world. Romaine Brooks's prime interests, on the other hand, were herself and her painting. She produced many self-portraits and portraitsof her own and Natalie's lovers and friends. She endured an unhappy childhood and a fraught relationship with her mother. She trusted no one but Natalie. Natalie and Romaine are at the center of this "Sapphic Idyll." Included, too, are their lovers and friend before and after they met: Liane de Pougy, the exquisite courtesan and lover of princes; Renée Vivien, poet of melancholy and death, who died of anorexia at age thirty-two; Dolly Wilde, niece of Oscar, who ran up huge bills and died of a drug overdose; the prima ballerina Ida Rubinstein; the writer Gabriele D'Annunzioand many others. Natalie's salon, attended by Gertrude Stein, and Colette and Edith Sitwell, was a magnet for social introductions and cultural innovations. Drawing from letters, papers, and paintings, Diana Souhami re-creates the lives and loves of this pair of dazzling and wild women. "Souhami makes no secret of her enthusiasm for Barney and Brooks, whom she introduces as 'American, rich and grandly lesbian.' She deals with their sex life - the 'kissing, nipping, delirium'with the same good humor and light touch that pervade the rest of the book. And she sprinkles the narrative with what she describes as 'discursions.' These italicized, journal-entry-ish and often cryptic paragraphs, tucked in between chapters, offer anecdotes about lesbian affairs of her own . . . Souhami's asides indicate that lustiness and loneliness are, eternally, emotional twins."Ada Calhoun, The New York Times "Even by the standards of the roaring 1920s the painter Romaine Brooks and the poet Natalie Barney lived life extraordinarily large. Their friends were the most bohemian, their parties the most risqué, their tortured love affair the most notorious in Europe. Diana Souhami tells a remarkable tale."The Sunday Telegraph Magazine "They were dandies, not revolutionaries. Souhami, accordingly, keeps her focus firmly on the personal. The dominant tone of this vividly entertaining book is one of all-tolerant amusement."The Sunday Times "Pages are crammed with descriptions of exotic characters, their extravagances and eccentricities, the lilies, the pearls, the velvet-lined rooms, the sacred monsters."The Sunday Telegraph "Brilliantly counterbalances Natalie's deepening adoration of Romaine with her lover's pathological, almost devilish manipulativeness . . . Natalie's salon and Romaine's paintings may be no more than cultural footnotes, but their love, in all its tortured, restless grandeur, deserves a kind of immortality."Literary Review "Souhami has written a fast-paced dual biography of poet and socialite Natalie Barney and her lover, artist Romaine Brooks. The book is a chronicle of Barney's many lesbian relationships, beginning with the famous French courtesan Liane de Pougy, but its focus is the relationship that Brooks and Barney shared over a span of 50 years. The book's tension springs from the opposing personalities of the two women. Brooks, eccentric and monastic, drew on her past and her solitude for inspiration, while Barney's lifeblood came from the community of female artists she nurtured in her famous salon. Souhami excels in re-creating the strong personalities of the women who broke free from their Victorian roots and became symbols of France's belle epoque era. Not a comprehensive biography, this book is a taster, highlighting the passions of both women."Maria Kochis, California State University, Sacramento, Library Journal "Though poet Natalie Barney and artist Romaine Brooks rubbed (usually more than) elbows with the artistic elites of Bohemian Paris . . . Souhami focuses on their relationships with one another and their many lovers . . . The author describes people each of the two American women encountered . . . among many others, Liane de Pougy, Renee Vivien and Lily de Gramont. Barney 'liked lots of sex, lavish display and theatricality, and wanted not to bind love to rules, particularly to the rule of exclusivity,' Souhami explains. 'She divided her amours into liaisons, demi-liaisons, and adventures, and called her nature fidele/infidele.'"Publishers Weekly
Review
Nominee for the Lambda Literary and Judy Grahn Awards "Epic romance... smartly sex-positive and so good-naturedly shocking."
--The New York Times Book Review
"Real tenderness and pathos... not only entertaining but affecting reading."
--The Washington Post
"Their friends were the most bohemian, their parties the most risqué, their tortured love affair the most notorious in Europe. Diana Souhami tells a remarkable tale."
--The Sunday Telegraph (U.K.)
Synopsis
Wild Girls is the critically acclaimed true story of two wealthy American heiresses---one an artist, the other a writer---whose stormy, passionate love affair captivated Pariss salon set between the wars.
Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks were rich, American, eccentric, and grandly lesbian. They met in Paris in 1915, and their relationship lasted more than fifty years, despite infidelity, separation, and temperamental differences. Romaine Brooks, a painter, was the product of an unhappy childhood and trusted no one but Natalie. Natalie Barney was passionate about life, sex, and love. Her Friday afternoon salons, attended by Gertrude Stein, and Colette and Edith Sitwell, were a magnet for social introductions and cultural innovations.
Drawing from letters, papers, and paintings, Diana Souhami, the award-winning author of Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter, re-creates the lives and loves of this pair of dazzling and wild women.
“Epic romance . . . smartly sex-positive and so good-naturedly shocking.”
---The New York Times Book Review
“Real tenderness and pathos . . . not only entertaining but affecting reading.”
---The Washington Post
“Their friends were the most bohemian, their parties the most risqué, their tortured love affair the most notorious in Europe. Diana Souhami tells a remarkable tale.”
---The Sunday Telegraph (UK)