Zeldas Story (Flappers Book 6)

Flappers by Judith Mackrell, review

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  • Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation by Judith Mackrell – review
  • Cressida Connolly enjoys an engaging tale of six women whose lives personified the Gatsby era
  • Reward Yourself

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    Dear Princess Grace, Dear Betty. Women in American Popular Music. An Excerpt from Women and Music. Shade of the Raintree, Centennial Edition. A Personal Biography of Betty Hutton. Life, Love and Art in Venice: How to write a great review. The review must be at least 50 characters long. The title should be at least 4 characters long.

    Your display name should be at least 2 characters long. At Kobo, we try to ensure that published reviews do not contain rude or profane language, spoilers, or any of our reviewer's personal information. You submitted the following rating and review. Once she had decided to become a professional painter she immersed herself completely in the project, certain that from now on her own ambitions would take precedence over his.

    All of these women had ambitions which were way ahead of what society was prepared to accept. Alcohol and drugs feature heavily in a number of these stores, a comfort in lives which were often unhappy. The most successful professionally was Josephine Baker, a woman who came from almost unimaginable hardship to become an international superstar whose fame endures long after her death. She never achieved the stable personal life she craved. In comparison Diana Cooper did have a stable home life, but at the cost of giving up a promising career in the theatre.

    These were exceptional women and they lived in fascinating times.

    This was an extremely interesting and well-researched book about six notable flappers. They came from different walks of life but all shared several commonalities: They lead extremely interesting lives in exotic places. They also suffered hardships and battled hard to gain respect equal to their mal This was an extremely interesting and well-researched book about six notable flappers. They also suffered hardships and battled hard to gain respect equal to their male counterparts. It took me twice as long to read this book because I stopped so often to google their photos and those of their famous friends, as well as the fabulous places they lived!

    If you enjoy reading about this era, you will no doubt love this book. It was a lot of fun to read. I learned a lot of new information about these very fascinating women. Aug 24, Agnesxnitt rated it really liked it. Marvelous - well written and with a couple of chapters to each 'Dangerous Woman' about their rise to fame and afterwards.

    The 20's seem to have been a wonderfully indulgent time to live - but only if you had the money, or the noteriety and cash, to really party through the decade. Some women were not satisfied with just living as society expected, and the women, or Ladies in some cases, certainly weren't and acted accordingly. Not sure I'd re-read this one, but would be interested in reading a more expanded biography of Josephine Baker. I have an interest in anything s, not just flappers.

    I would like to learn more about dangerous women from the s.

    Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation by Judith Mackrell – review

    But it was all watered down because the consequences were so low. Their entitlement and privilege allowed them to make these decisions, to act in these ways, to suffer the repercussions without all that much suffering because money and breeding can just get them out of trouble. As a result Josephine Baker was the most compelling story to me. She came from nothing and with pure drive and ambition she worked her ass off and fought for what she received, all while having black skin and fighting through everything that brought her. I mean I guess you can say most of these women are the products of their environment.

    They had privilege and experiences afforded them because of who they were born as that others had to scrabble for. Some would say society required different things from these women so it was a big leap to make the decision to buck against them. I mean, yes, but they never leapt that far from comfort. For most of them that entitlement was bred into them. Squalor for the white women was a four bedroom apartment instead of a sex bedroom. It was dining in a bar instead of in a restaurant or simply NOT buying that particular dress. As a result I felt little to nothing for the majority white women in this book.

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    They were arrogant and useless, living day to day on their own entitlement and expecting the world to fall at their feet. They were unsympathetic and rather insufferable. I completely get the romantic aspect of these women throwing off their corsets and dancing the Charleston in their best pearls. But the reality is just so. I think FLAPPERS does a good job of exhibiting all of the social changes going on at the time that allowed these women to do what they did without, say, being institutionalized for being too whatever.

    It portrays this unstoppable wave of change fueled by an entire generation of women, spearheaded by the women portrayed in this book. Even Josephine, especially when she came back to the US after she rose to fame in Paris, suffered far more than just gossipy whispers about her exploits. The flapper movement was female, predominantly white female. The richer, the better. It is what it is. But she certainly rips the wool off of the hindsight eyes in exposing some of the greatest flappers of the time for what they truly were.

    First things first, again, I like the twenties and I like a good biography from time to time. It was also no doubt well researched and easy to read. Why am I only giving it 2 stars then? Well it is the people this book is about. I found them difficult to relate to. Sure they are well known and what they were doing was new in the s. That is noteworthy, but half the time I was wondering why they did what they did because it seemed like they were setting themselves up for trouble.

    And in nearly a First things first, again, I like the twenties and I like a good biography from time to time. And in nearly all the cases that is what they got because there is so much drama, almost all the time. Well, if not, I was. You cannot just do things for shockvalue and because it hasn't been done before, there needs to be a purpose to it. I'll at admit I skipped every now and again, there was just such desperation to it. Jul 29, Gayle Noble rated it it was ok Shelves: I was looking forward to finally reading this book, which covers one of the most interesting time periods of the twentieth century the Roaring Twenties.

    Unfortunately it took me almost a month to read it as I had to keep moving on to another book and coming back to this one. It's quite a feat to make a book about six such interesting women quite so boring to read. Nov 26, Liudmila rated it it was amazing. This is a story about six wayward women — flappers - epitomizing the roaring twenties. Really enjoyed reading the book and would recommend it to everyone interested in the period of the s and in artistic personalities. Mar 07, Lily rated it liked it.

    This wasn't the best piece of nonfiction I've ever read, but the content was certainly interesting. These women were linked in their incredibly depressing love lives and their sometimes debilitating need to be seen. By far the most interesting sections were Zelda's. Such tur This wasn't the best piece of nonfiction I've ever read, but the content was certainly interesting.

    Josephine Baker's sections were very interesting too, although the casual exoticism was so disgusting I almost had to put the book down. It was pretty fascinating to read about these women's lives and the ways that they tried to make names for themselves and celebrate life in such a boisterous way while teetering on the edge of insanity for some--Zelda. Although it was a little quaint to hear of how "modern" and shocking some of their behavior was: I mean the Charleston is universally known as the sexiest dance, but still.

    It was particularly interesting to see the clashes between the generations. Nancy basically never spoke to her aristocratic mother again, and Diana clashed with hers too, to an extent. These women's relationships with their children were no less fraught. And poor Kizette, Tamara de Lempicka's comically named child!

    These kids were raised in such turbulent homes filled with adultery, threats, drugs, and booze. They didn't really seem able to have a relationship with their children as they grew older. I'm only giving this review a three star rating, because Judith Mackrell's writing didn't really grab me. She had some good analysis, but See great non-fiction shelf Learned some cool stuff though! I was drawn to this title because it had been awhile since I'd read a biography and I liked the fact that it highlighted six women so I felt like I could get more of a sense for the generation rather than just one person's life.

    Sadly my excitement about the book ends with the anticipation I had. The two mai I was drawn to this title because it had been awhile since I'd read a biography and I liked the fact that it highlighted six women so I felt like I could get more of a sense for the generation rather than just one person's life. The two main things that bothered me were Mackrell's choice of pacing and the voice that she uses throughout.

    Instead of having six full stories, back to back, she instead chose to interlace and overlap the stories. When it's done well, that style choice can be stunning. When it's not, it's chaotic and confusing and annoying.

    Cressida Connolly enjoys an engaging tale of six women whose lives personified the Gatsby era

    You don't know where you are in the person's timeline that you left 25 pages ago and recently rejoined, it's not sequential - which is a bad thing for a biography - unless you can clearly and cleanly explain the story lines and it makes sense whey it's done in that manner. Chapters ended abruptly and jumped ahead and she struggled to make the story seem coherent in any way.

    Which leads to my next bit of frustration - this was little better than a gossip rag about celebrities who no one cares about any longer. Diana "thought" and Zelda "felt" and so on and so forth. It ready like a terrible magazine instead of a well researched biography. How, praytell, do you KNOW what they thought and felt? She didn't have letters documented to back up her assumptions and furthermore tried to tie the women together based on her assumptions alone with lines like Josephine must have felt this way as well It was just grating.

    I'd love to learn more about these women and get a solid recommendation from someone because this was just not worth reading. I think that this social movement of rebellious, ambitious, stylish, and sexually-liberated woman is SO iconic, but I also think that flappers often get overlooked in the history of feminism.

    Fair enough, they didn't make any great political change like the suffragettes or the campaigners of the s. Even the social change they made was minimal; even though famous flappers inspired their admirers to emulate them, this really was a time when the liberation of individu 4. Even the social change they made was minimal; even though famous flappers inspired their admirers to emulate them, this really was a time when the liberation of individual women came above the liberation of women as a whole.

    Despite that, though, I find these women fascinating and quite amazing. They were pioneers, trail-blazers, and true icons. Yes, they did questionable things, but the things that they achieved despite the patriarchy of their era are incredible. I truly believe that more people need to know about these historical figures, myself included. Prior to reading this book, I knew a hell of a lot about Zelda Fitzgerald she was my main motivation for picking up this book , a tiny amount about Josephine Baker, and nothing at all about the other four women who feature in this biography - Lady Diana Cooper, Nancy Cunard, Tallulah Bankhead, and Tamara de Lempicka.

    After doing a little research whilst I was reading this book, I've discovered that Tamara de Lempicka's artworks are actually remarkably familiar to me one serves as the cover for my edition of The Well of Loneliness , but I had no idea of the artist's name until now.

    See a Problem?

    As a result, this biography proved great fun for me because it both introduced me to new stories and allowed me to get better acquainted with the ones I already knew. As a Fitzgerald lover, I'm always up for as many chances as I can get to read about Zelda and Scott, but it's about time that my perceptions of the s broadened beyond them and this book was the perfect excuse for that to happen. In here, I encountered remarkable women who I'd probably have never learned the existence of otherwise.

    I'm so thankful that I picked this up for that reason. I feel like I've learnt so, so much from it, and I can also see this acting as a springboard for further reading. The stories of the women in 'Flappers' are somewhat limited - Mackrell crams each into around 70 pages, and what happened to these women after the s is dealt with very briskly in the epilogue - but that's to be expected in a joint biography of six.

    This book serves as an introduction more than anything else, showing how each of these women embodied the idea of the flapper rather than giving an in-depth account of their individual lives. The brevity of each story certainly didn't bother me, as I was getting acquainted with most of these characters for the first time and only really needed to know the basics.

    I also think that Mackrell did a very good job of selecting the material to use for each story. Zelda's chapters which I can judge best as she's the only one I knew a significant amount about beforehand gave a fair account of her marriage, mental illness, and many artistic pursuits. I don't think that anything particularly important was missing, even if some parts were dealt with more quickly than others. The same goes for the other women: I feel as though I have a decent understanding of each of them now, with no glaring gaps in my knowledge that I feel I need to fill.

    Certainly, I want to pick up other, more focused biographies in order to gain greater insight into these fascinating personalities, but what I gained here more than sufficed, as I think the way that it has peaked my interest shows. My favourite of these women to learn about was probably Tamara de Lempicka.

    Of all the women in this book, her beliefs and behaviour probably line up the least with my own she was right-wing, a serial adulteress, and a neglectful mother , but I think that she led a fascinating existence and I am stunned that it's taken me this long to learn her name when, as I said, her art is so familiar to me. Diana Cooper's story was the least interesting to me personally, but I did still take a lot from it.

    I think that Mackrell's decision to focus on women across a range of professions and countries was inspired, because their differences emphasised their individual talents. I also have to praise Mackrell for the attention she paid to these women's sexuality. Tamara and Tallulah were both bisexual, and, from the details Mackrell included in her story, it seems that Josephine Baker was too.

    Reward Yourself

    Josephine Baker, a poor black girl born in the slums of St. As modern-day feminism licks its wounds in the age of Donald Trump, Judith Mackrell's work is a brilliant reminder that progress does not occur in a straight line, that the battle for women's sexual and financial independence was fought with only partial success by a small group of fabulous women in a fleeting era of jazz, art deco and silent films. It is the constant dilemma for young women to have it all and keep it all, balanced. Nancy basically never spoke to her aristocratic mother again, and Diana clashed with hers too, to an extent. By all six were travelling to places far beyond those that they, or anyone else, could have envisaged. My reading about and from the early twentieth century has expanded greatly since joining the Bright Young Things group on Goodreads last year, and I think that group may be where I first heard about this book. And poor Kizette, Tamara de Lempicka's comically named child!

    Judith Mackrell makes no bones about the vigorous sex lives of her subjects: Heiress and poet Nancy Cunard has flings with writers Michael Arlen and Aldous Huxley, but finds Huxley too tentative a lover, describing the experience of sleeping with him as: Actress Tallulah Bankhead is hardly ever out of bed, famously quipping: As Mackrell notes, drily: This catalogue of slap and tickle is amusing and illustrates how different the Roaring Twenties were from the fusty Edwardian era.

    Mackrell is an engaging storyteller with a deceptively light touch which allows her to introduce serious details of social history, like vitamins into breakfast cereal, without altering the flavour. She is especially good on the correlation between music and morals: She attributes the unconventional brio of her young women to the usual suspects: This is an interesting aspect of her book, explaining some of the cross-pollination of fashions and ideas between America and Europe.

    Rehabilitating Zelda, the original It Girl.