Last of the Duchess

出版者:Akadine Press

作者:Caroline Blackwood

页数:295

出版时间:1995-1

价格:42.00元

装帧:Paperback

isbn号码:9781585790012

具体描述

Book Description

Intriguing, suspenseful, and witty, this is the story of journalist and novelist Caroline Blackwood's search for the late Duchess of Windsor. It is also a provocative exploration of the often bizarre connection between heightened celebrity and approaching death--in Blackwood's words, "the fatal effects of myth." First serial to New York Times Magazine.

From Publishers Weekly

Novelist and journalist Blackwood has pulled off quite a coup here: she has written a biographical portrait of the late Wallis Simpson, duchess of Windsor, without ever having seen more of her than the outside of her magnificent house near Paris and a murky photograph taken through the window by an Italian paparazzo. In 1980, the Sunday Times of London sent Blackwood to interview the 84-year-old duchess for a piece to run with photographs by Lord Snowdon, Princess Margaret's husband. The assignment was dynamite, but the pair are stopped dead by Suzanne Blum, an 83-year-old eccentric and vitriolic French lawyer known as Maitre Bloom, who identifies so closely with the duchess that her life is a round of suing newspapers, perpetrating both lies and legends of her charge's beauty and good health. Maitre Bloom firmly takes over this book. A few derivative chapters cover the well-known details of Wallis Simpson's early life, but Maitre Bloom shapes every page with her tantrums and vanities. The portrait is interesting psychologically and one admires this poised effort to salvage an aborted assignment. However, the absence of denouement-neither Blackwood nor Lord Snowden make it past the ferocious protector-makes the reader wonder why she is paying this much attention to a little-known, if complex, eccentric. In the end, one can only feel sorry for both the obsessed and the object of her obsession.

From Library Journal

In 1980 when the London Sunday Times commissioned Lord Snowden to photograph the 84-year-old Duchess of Windsor, then living outside of Paris, Blackwood was asked to accompany him as a reporter. Alas, this journalistic scoop was not to be, for blocking all access to the duchess was her lawyer, the fierce and formidable Suzanne Blum. Interviewing such contemporaries of Wallis Simpson as Lady Mosley and Lady Diana Cooper, Blackwood discovered that the octogenarian Maitre Blum, one of France's most powerful attorneys, had complete control over the duchess and her estate. Since Blum kept the ailing duchess isolated in her shuttered mansion, Blackwood could not verify whether Wallis had fallen into a coma, as rumored by her friends, or whether she was still as beautiful and witty as ever, as Blum maintained. And that is this book's problem; offering inconclusive speculations, it reads like the extended Vanity Fair article it should have been. For larger collections.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　-Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"

From Booklist

A strange book--no, a fascinating one--about a strange situation. Most everyone knows something of the story of the duke and duchess of Windsor. As King Edward VIII, he gave up the British throne in 1936 to marry American divorc{?}ee Wallis Simpson, and they subsequently lived in France as little more than social butterflies. In 1980, novelist Blackwood was asked by the London Sunday Times to write an article about the widowed and elderly duchess of Windsor. Little did Blackwood know that a "total cordon sanitaire of silence" had been thrown up around the duchess by her forbidding lawyer, the infamous Ma{?}itre Blum. On more than one occasion, Blackwood talked with Blum, but never once was she allowed to visit the duchess herself. Indeed, Blackwood's book about the entire episode is less about the duchess of Windsor than about the cantankerous Blum, who is most definitely an interesting figure in her own right. Blackwood's amazing account of attempting to verify the duchess' state of health in the face of Blum's deterrents--a story that reads almost like a gothic novel--can finally be published now that not only the duchess but also her guard-dog lawyer are both deceased. (The latter actually threatened Blackwood with death if she published a negative word about her famous client!)

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 Brad Hooper

About Author

Daughter of the Marquis and Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, Lady Carolin Blackwood was born in 1931 and grew up in Nortern Ireland. Her first husband, Lucian Freud, whom she married in 1953, has immortalized her youthful beauty in several of his finest portraits; she was later married to the American poet Robert Lowell; she has four children. Her first novel, The Stepdaughter, was published in 1967 and won the David Higham Fiction Prize; her last book, The Last of the Duchess, was published in 1995. In all, she published five novels, four nonfiction works, and, with Anna Haycraft, an idiosyncratic cookbook entitled Darling, You Shouldn't Have Gone to So Much Trouble. Resident in her later years in Sag Harbo, New York, She died in New York City in 1996.

用户评价

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总的来说，这本书给我留下了极为深刻的印象。作者的想象力是如此的丰富，他构建了一个如此真实而又充满魅力的世界，让我流连忘返。书中的故事，虽然发生在遥远的过去，却能引发我对当下生活的思考。那些关于爱、关于忠诚、关于背叛、关于成长的议题，至今仍然具有现实意义。我特别欣赏作者对人性的深刻洞察，他笔下的人物，没有绝对的好人或坏人，只有在特定环境下的选择和挣扎。这种 nuanced 的描绘，使得人物更加真实可信，也更能引发读者的共鸣。书中的情感描写也尤为动人，那些刻骨铭心的爱恋，那些撕心裂肺的痛苦，都被作者描绘得感人至深。我常常会在阅读时，被深深地打动，甚至流下眼泪。这是一本能够触及灵魂的书，它不仅让我沉浸在故事的情节中，更能让我反思自己的内心，审视自己的价值观。

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从第一页开始，我就被作者的叙事方式深深吸引了。它不像许多小说那样直白地铺陈故事，而是巧妙地运用各种暗示和留白，让读者自己去品味和解读。这种“犹抱琵琶半遮面”的写作手法，反而更能激发我的好奇心，让我主动去探索故事背后的真相。人物之间的对话也极具匠心，看似平淡的交流，却暗藏着深意，每一个词语，每一个停顿，都可能隐藏着重要的线索。我常常需要停下来，反复咀嚼这些对话，才能捕捉到人物之间微妙的情感变化和潜在的动机。作者对细节的把握也令人惊叹，无论是服饰的颜色、配饰的样式，还是食物的种类、场景的布置，都充满了时代特色，仿佛是一幅幅精美的历史画卷展现在我的眼前。这些细节不仅丰富了故事的背景，也为人物的性格和命运增添了许多注脚。阅读的过程，就像是在玩一场高智商的解谜游戏，我需要将零散的信息 pieces 拼凑起来，才能逐渐勾勒出故事的全貌。这种沉浸式的阅读体验，让我欲罢不能。