MixedTimes Literary Supplement (UK)A considerable amount of research has clearly gone into this book. The variety of sources drawn on is impressive ... That said, when reading The Renoir Girls, all too often one has the feeling that the author is mastered by her documentation and not the reverse. Constant name-dropping weighs down the account. Quotations are strung together with little in between. Details spin out of control. Facts are sometimes mentioned twice within a few pages. There are recurring mistakes in patronyms or titles, sloppy translations, jarring changes of tense and other imperfections ... It would take a heavily revised and corrected edition to live up to at least some of the puff on the dust jacket of the elegant hardback.
