PositiveThe Wall Street JournalSympathetic, impeccably researched ... Ms. Dykstra... compensates for the lack of material about Isabella’s inner life with insightful observations about her subject’s character.
Anne De Courcy
MixedThe Wall Street Journal... readable ... is less a study of Chanel than a snapshot history of the Riviera from 1930 to 1953, the years that the creator of the little black dress and Chanel No. 5 maintained her elegant, 10,000-square-foot home outside the town of Roquebrune. Chanel, in fact, disappears from the narrative for long stretches, as Ms. de Courcy fast-scrolls through the Côte d’Azur escapades of a rich cast of characters ... Ms. de Courcy missteps, however, in recounting a supposed episode in which Chanel was kidnapped from the Ritz...The author gives no source for this story, and it seems unlikely given its striking similarity to the well-documented arrest of Chanel toward the end of the war by two members of the French Forces of the Interior, the loose band of resistance fighters, soldiers and ordinary citizens who had taken up arms in a rampage of revenge against the occupiers.
