The subject’s absence turns out to be a kind of blessing, leaving the author a free hand to recount what is, by any measure, a fascinating and utterly sui generis life ... De Stefano, who has filled in some important biographical gaps, is less reliable as a critic of Fallaci’s work. She seems not to recognize that these final productions, with their depressing quotient of egotism and Islamophobia, ended Fallaci’s career on a low note.
...Cristina De Stefano’s new biography of the Italian journalistic superstar Oriana Fallaci — unabashed hagiography to counter the writer’s late-life reputational demise — must suffice ...Fallaci was a piquant, stylish beauty, self-consciously photogenic in the Joan Didion way, a midcentury woman writer vigilant about her public image ...De Stefano, who had access to living friends, family members and colleagues as well as archives and letters, reveals another side to her life — long periods of self-imposed emotional and actual isolation to devote herself to writing, interspersed with anguished affairs ... De Stefano doesn’t excuse her subject’s intolerance, but she does put it in context.
Cristina De Stefano reminds readers of Fallaci’s journalistic legacy while clumsily attempting to disappear her many flaws. But one must pity Ms. De Stefano, tasked with recounting the life of someone who once declared she 'never authorized, nor will I ever authorize, a biography' ... Ms. De Stefano devotes only a handful of pages to Fallaci’s anti-Muslim turn and avoids quoting any of the controversial passages, instead offering perfunctory descriptions of her critics ('Some accuse her of inciting racial and religious hatred') and breezing toward 2006, when Fallaci succumbed to cancer. Oriana Fallaci’s career was varied and imperfect, but she is deserving of a serious treatment by a serious writer. Instead, Ms. De Stefano has produced a single-author Festschrift that, in examining the life of a journalist who reveled in controversy, studiously avoids it.
It’s the first authorized biography we have of Fallaci, with access to new personal records, and welcome for that reason. It is not particularly well-written or thoughtful but it gets her story onto the page and, thanks to its subject, is never dull.
Although favorably inclined toward her subject, the book is not a hagiography; De Stefano diligently attempts to reveal all sides of a complex and brilliant figure. Fallaci left an enormous body of work, both journalism and fiction, and the future may demand a more definitive assessment of a long and productive career. But for now, this is a superb introduction to the life of an irreplaceable figure.
Written in the present tense, the book allows readers to get to know Fallaci as she progresses in her career rather than in the context of the notoriety she garnered in her later years. This is an intimate investigation into a larger-than-life personality who, in the end, was just another lonely soul.
