Ms. Wright chronicles Mamie’s competitive entertaining with some sympathy as well as a nice irony ... Irreverent humor and careful excavation of newspaper archives ... It has the light (very light) touch of some of her previous titles, dealing with such topics as the worst plagues and the worst breakups in history, without the substance of her recent biography of Madame Restell, the 19th-century New York abortionist. For those who love eye-popping accounts of events like the recent Bezos-Sánchez wedding in Venice, this book will be catnip.
Wright has a great eye for the absurd and amusing idiosyncrasies of the Gilded Age ... [Wright] resists interpretation and moralizing, dismissing easy critiques of Fish’s frivolity and excess ... It’s hard to know from this book what Fish thought of herself ... Spirited, sparkling ... Celebrate[s] the idea of pleasure purely for its own sake.
