Ecstasy, by Mary Sharratt. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018

I was torn about requesting this book. On the one hand, I love Mary Sharratt. Her writing really resonates with me. On the other, it’s about Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel. A couple of years ago I read a biography of her, and it did *not* portray her in a good light. It was in agreement with what I already knew of her: she was an anti-Semite, despite having married two Jewish men and having had affairs with others. She was emotionally abusive and controlling. She was, in most every way, a horrid person. But… Mary Sharratt! I had to give it a go. 

Sharratt paints Schindler in a totally different light. We meet a beautiful young woman who is serious about music and composing and longs to take advanced lessons, which her mother and step-father say is a waste of money. She is also wakening to the attractions of me; her first kiss is from Klimt – who her stepfather advises to get the heck away from the underage Alma. When she is given permission to take some more music lessons, she and her tutor fall in love, but they are forbidden to marry as the tutor is a Jew. Later, when she wishes to marry another Jew, composer and music director Mahler, it is all right- he has prestige and money. Her parents demonstrated some unpleasant prejudices to her! 

Head over heels in love with Mahler, she agrees to marry him under his conditions: she must give up her own music and just support him in his career. Take care of the house, the finances, and the kids when they come along, leaving him free to give his total attention to composing and conducting. It’s a brutal compromise. Numerous times, she longs to go back to composing or at least playing the piano, but it is forbidden. She finally has a nervous breakdown. 

I found this Alma Schindler appealing and sympathetic- women are still making the compromise she did these days (so do men, but not as often as women do). This is not the Alma of the biographies. I liked this Alma, and her sacrifice resonated with me. I could see how this could have made her bitter and cynical- ‘Ecstasy’ ends shortly after Mahler’s death, so we don’t see how Sharratt would have dealt with Alma’s later life.

I give the book five stars. Sharratt’s writing style is, as usual, wonderful, and she made a person I was prejudiced against likeable and well rounded.



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She, by Michelle Latiolais. W.W. Norton & Co., 2015

‘She’ is an odd little book, neither novel nor short stories. Nameless women populate the chapters-stories? – with one girl, a fifteen year old runaway from a strict, abusive, fundamentalist family wandering in and out throughout the book. She has no idea what Los Angeles is like, but manages to have a charmed arrival, encountering good people who wish her no harm- which strikes me as very unrealistic. One woman faces cancer; another knows her husband has yet another girlfriend, and this one may be serious; her friend makes elegant, super realistic floral cake decorations yet is low paid for them and the baker she sells to claims to make them himself. One woman meets a man at the gas station who flirts with her and asks her to have coffee with him; the result of her decision there is horrifying.

There is no time in these vignettes to get a deep feeling for these women. We see them pass by but they don’t linger, although the end story gives us the feeling that a longer chapter may be starting. Kind of an enjoyable read but sort of fluffy. 

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I received this book free from the Amazon Vine program. This in no way influenced my review. 

The Pleasures of Men, by Kate Williams. Hyperion 2012

Set in 1840’s London, ‘The Pleasures of Men’ tells the tale of orphaned nineteen year old Catherine Sorgeiul after she is taken in by her uncle. Uncle lives in genteel poverty amidst books and anthropological artifacts. Encouraged to not think about the tragedies of her past that led her to be institutionalized for a time, but given nothing to do that interests her, she becomes obsessed with the Man of Crows, a serial killer who is targeting young women. To try and get a handle on how he thinks, she begins to write about the victims without realizing that she is drawing bad intentions to herself. Soon she finds herself unable to trust anyone.

The atmosphere is wonderfully created- the heat of the city in summer, the claustrophobic life Catherine lives, the fear, and the uncertainty as to what is real and what isn’t – and made me feel like I was there. It was murky and shadowy, as I imagine Catherine’s mind must have been. As more and more peculiar discoveries are made that don’t seem to fit together quite right, the mystery deepens instead of being solved.

However, the story changes point of view and point in time frequently, from Catherine to the several girls who are murdered to, finally, the murderer. This made it very hard to follow. Most of the characters were poorly developed; perhaps it was to allow us to see that Catherine wasn’t really interested in them and just saw their surface, but it made it hard for me to care about them. Catherine herself, despite her situation, was hard to care for. The story seemed to lack a clear focus, and in the end it left me disappointed.