MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewDidion remains a slippery figure. In fact, the author dubiously claims that the only way to see Didion is through the \'glass\' of Babitz ... The author is unafraid of sounding like a besotted teenager ... Throughout the book Anolik’s tone is self-conscious and conspiratorial, which at first feels like gossipy fun, as if she’s writing beyond the male gaze, the book both taking itself very seriously and not seriously at all. But the podcast-speak...loses its charm quickly ... Anolik doesn’t need such stylistic indulgences to bring the reader in; she is a thorough reporter with an ear for humorous detail ... It’s a promise that never pays off. Didion feels like a supporting character in the book and their rivalry feels entirely one-sided. You end up wondering if Didion thought about Babitz much at all.
Ina Garten
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewThe Jeffrey hagiography finally ends and a more powerful portrait of a marriage emerges. It would have been easy for Garten to gloss over this part of her life, or to omit it all together. But it’s truly inspiring to read how they gradually come back together ... She has created an inviting and relaxing world that’s the equivalent of one of her cocktail recipes.
James Polchin
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewPolchin knows the era, and brings to his account a wealth of colorful supporting detail ... For all its lurid trappings, the sensationalistic story ends up feeling a bit dry — and we never find out exactly what this important family was hiding.
Jill Burke
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewA breezy and readable portrait of 16th-century Italy through the lens of beauty standards and practices ... The details are fascinating. The main challenge for this reader is keeping track of the many, many women mentioned, whose names and lives often receive just a few sentences or pages. Burke would have benefited from chiseling more of a narrative from her copious research, and including fewer rapid-fire anecdotes.
Damien Lewis
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewLewis employs careful language to hedge the title’s bold assertion ... Lewis is a verbose writer who can dedicate myriad pages to his own biography...At times, he makes himself sound like the Indiana Jones of archival research, imbuing the process with drama ... Lewis’s assertion — that for Baker, the unconditional love of animals was probably easier than relationships with humans — is both simplistic and probably accurate. Either way, he quickly moves on from this unusual foray into psychological analysis to return to his literary strengths, facts and action ... Sometimes it feels as if Lewis is content to accept the narrative that Baker consciously created for herself ... France is idealized...Lewis unquestioningly accepts the assertion, an overly simplistic and frankly inaccurate view of a country that struggles with race to this day ... A fascinating subject at a pivotal time in her life, Baker still doesn’t come alive on the page and remains unknowable. Maybe her ability to conceal and charm are why she was so good at espionage, but Lewis doesn’t take much time to explore the question of how she conceived of her own story ... What is compelling is the ragtag, oddly posh crew of supporting characters who surround her in her adventures ... Does it really matter if Josephine Baker was a particularly active member of the French Resistance, or an actual spy? Not to the French government. In the end, she earned the Medaille de la Résistance Avec Palme, the Croix de Guerre and the Legion d’Honneur, and was buried in the Pantheon. All the accouterments, in short, of a true French heroine.
