Dangerous Muse : The Life of Lady Caroline Blackwood

Rating:
Summary: Mediocre
Review: Dangerous Muse is an intriguing biography of an underrated writer. Caroline Blackwood seemed to be one of those women doomed to live in the shadow of the men in her life (Lucien Freud, Robert Lowell), but managed to transcend the highs and lows of these relationships by becoming a distinctive novelist, short story writer and journalist. Schoenberger's bio is remarkable for its detail (especially Blackwood's Anglo-Irish background), empathy (Blackwood's drinking is put into context and not used as a magic key to explain everything) and lucid explication of Blackwood's eclectic output. If you are a sucker for books about off-beat literati then Dangerous Muse is your proverbial cup of tea. Nice photos too.

Rating:
Summary: A BRILLANT PIECE OF WORK!!!
Review: Dangerous Muse: The Life Of Lady Caroline Blackwood is a wonderful true story of a woman born into a georgian irish- anglo estate in 1931. Lady Caroline lives a bohemian life far removed from the lifestyle she had been born into. She is a fascinating women, one you would like to sit next to at a dinner party. Nancy Schoenberger does an outstanding job of getting beneath the surface of Caroline's life. This is a book you will lose yourself into and wonder where the hours have gone. I highly recommend this book as one of the top ten of the year.

Rating:
Summary: Reads like a gothic fairy tale
Review: I agree with many of the criticisms of this book, and I thought it was a scream that Caroline was continually described as one of the great beauties of her day. If she was, the photos in the book do not do that statement any justice. (...) The description of her as a great beauty appears to be more fiction/legend than fact. (...)I was disappointed that the parallels between Caroline's alcohol/drug abuse and the tragedies and traumas in her life were never made.

Although the book was written from an extremely biased, romanticized point of view, I thought it was extremely well written and enjoyed reading it very much. For me, it had incredible entertainment value and had a similar appeal that a gothic Anne Rice story or a trashy Hollywood Jackie Collins novel might have. The book had incredible appeal as a sociopolitical commentary. (...) So for that expose alone and for writing in such a way that kept me engrossed in Caroline's story, I tip my hat off to Shoenberger and give this book a four star rating.

Rating:
Summary: Great, except for one area
Review: I have to admit that when I first began reading this biography of Lady Caroline, it did not immediately enthrall me the way I thought it might, after having read the book's description. The first chapter or so deals almost exclusively with her family's history, and I found the endless names and descriptions of the different people boring. *However* as I began to read forward, I found myself fascinated with the sort of wit and charm Caroline Blackwood posessed (as is evident with her writings) The little excerpts from her fiction and non-fiction works scattered throughout the length of the biography were very important, as I think they fit perfectly with what Miss Schoenberger had been describing within Caroline's life. They provided a lot of insight into what was happening in her life, in an almost poetical manner. There is no doubt that the author has a strong talent for writing, but I think the fact that different members of Caroline Blackwood's family refused to contribute hurt Nancy Schoenberger's effort for a deeper story. All in all, by the end of the book, I definitely wanted more to read. The author's fluid style of writing fit the subject matter well and it wasn't repetitive or dull by any means. I was however, disappointed with one aspect of the novel, and that is why wasn't more written about the development as Lady Caroline as a writer? I've read a few of her books, and she is obviously extremely talented in the area of psychological prose...there was more emphasis put on Caroline Blackwood's relationships than what was really the most fascinating thing about her, and that was her ability to so vividly and acutely write a novel of the psychological aspect...that was her true genius, not the fact that she was beautiful and had famous husbands. Too bad that wasn't put across, and that that's what Caroline will be remembered for, instead of what she *should*. Nevertheless a great biography by Nancy Schoenberger, given what she had to work with.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointment!
Review: I was quite disappointed in this book. The writing is good, but seems mostly about people other than Caroline. There is little depth or insight to Schoenberger's portrait of her. We don't know much about who Caroline is, what she thinks, and the deeper motives behind her behaviour. About a fourth of the way through the book, I found myself paging ahead in the hope of discovering her.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointment!
Review: I was quite disappointed in this book. The writing is good, but seems mostly about people other than Caroline. There is little depth or insight to Schoenberger's portrait of her. We don't know much about who Caroline is, what she thinks, and the deeper motives behind her behaviour. About a fourth of the way through the book, I found myself paging ahead in the hope of discovering her.

Rating:
Summary: A paradoxical and beguiling figure,
Review: Lady Caroline is extremely charming and repugnant at once, to this reader. Like another reviewer, I found the book to be impossible to put down, and I read almost straight through, until I was done. Beautiful, high-born, and slovenly, a constant smoker of cigarettes and a night-and-day-long consumer of vodka, Lady Caroline Blackwood nonetheless marries both a well known painter and America's leading poet of her time. She never stops attracting famous, wealthy men. Nancy Schoenberger peels off layer after layer to reveal both Lady Caroline and her aristocratic and wealthy set of friends and relations. I thought hard about those jet set and well born, many of them famous, friends of hers, as I read, and it occurred to me to think that they were blessed with money and talent and free time and fame, while the rest of us are even more blessed in that we have been given the work ethic, common sense, and bills to pay. The book inspires such thoughts and comparisons, whether or not they are on the money. I enjoyed it hugely.

Rating:
Summary: Another Legendary Beauty/Muse Story
Review: This is a very romanticized viewpoint of Lady Caroline's troubled life but it was so well written and readable that it was impossible to put down. Like most of these type of lengends, Lillie Langtry comes to mind, she was famous mostly for who she bedded and who she knew. BUT, there is MORE. Like Langtry, Lady Blackwood inspired whomever she came in contact with. Some woman just have that persona and I don't feel it is fair to overlook that part of their history. Once again, we put all the blame on the woman and forget that the MEN also had a say in their attachments to her lure. Her beauty was more an entire package rather than the classic sense of beauty, per se. I highly recommend this book to all Langtry fans and the woman who are interested in these types of tastemakers.

Rating:
Summary: Rode Hard and Put Away Wet
Review: This would be an excellent description of wellborn Lady Caroline Blackwood, legendary Anglo-Irish beauty. She had a penchant for marrying artistes. Her first marriage was to savage, wild man artist Lucian Freud, grandson of Sigmund. Her third and last husband was Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Robert Lowell. Lady Caroline became a fine writer in her own right. She began writing seriously while married to Lowell and continued to do so for about ten years after his death. This accounted for 15 years of her 65 years on earth. She lost her father at age 13, and was sadly neglected (emotionally) during her childhood.

To an upper-class English or Irish reader of her generation (1931-1996), her childhood would sound fairly normal with the nannies and the governesses and seeing her parents once a day for an hour at teatime. But Mother Maureen, a Guinness heiress, was a singularly spoiled, vain woman who had almost no interest in her children. There is no doubt Lady Caroline suffered and had almost no parental guidance. After the proper coming out and a debut year in London, she immediately embraced the bohemian life in Soho. Men fell at her feet, homo and heterosexual; all were in her thrall. She was a girl of great silences and steady gazes out of her magnificent eyes. She was also a drunk and slovenly her entire life. As she grew older, her beauty could not stand up to her lifestyle. She began to look like a ravaged Jeanne Moreau; yet never lost her tremendous appeal to men.

Ms. Schoenberger has done a beautiful job of detailing Lady Caroline's life. She is meticulous in her research and scholarship. Her writing skills are admirable; she neither intrudes, nor is she stiffly reserved. She at all times appears tolerant and non-judgmental. I see on the book jacket that the author is a poet as well as a writer. If this book is any example, I hope she continues her writing.

My problem with the book was I found the subject most unlikable. Lady Caroline never lost her sense of entitlement in that however objectionable she looked, smelled or acted; she felt she was God's chosen. She emulated her mother in irresponsibility and neglect of her own children. Her outlook on life was pessimistic in the extreme, but she was stand-up proof for the adage `living well is the best revenge.' Recommended for the excellent writing and scholarship.