35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Exceptionally wretched, August 26, 2000
The nine reviewers who precede me have on balance been kind when giving this pretentious bit of nonsense an average rating of 2 stars. This is alleged to be a biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner, and while she plays a part in this written mess, it is the Author, Douglas Shand-Tucci who places himself and his feelings on par with his alleged subject.
I have never read anything that was punctuated, or better stated mutilated, than this offering the New York Times deemed "Notable". Notable it is, for one reviewer gave up because of the exclamation points; this Author uses them more often than periods, but never begins to approach in frequency the repetitive structural disasters that riddle every page. Maybe it is because his name contains one, I can think of no other reason, for this man uses more hyphens on a page than normally would be encountered on 100 pages of any other work. Sentences that must compete for records in length in part due to the parentheticals, quotes, and other handfuls of punctuated nonsense that was thrown at these pages by the handful.
Then there is the incessant use of "I", this is used in inane asides, and when he answers himself endlessly, i.e. "What was it that Twain said..." And then there is his habit of condescending to his readers. He will use a word he presumes would not be understood by a junior-high English class, and then goes on to explain what he means to his readers, who he clearly believes to be semi-literate.
It is an accomplishment to write about a fascinating woman who first conceived, and then created a collection of art, and a building for it, on a scale no other woman had ever done. However after 150 pages she has bought 2 paintings that the Author devoted about the same number of sentences to, why, because the balance is spent exploring the personal lives of the people around her made doubly long by the Author's pontificating on their life preferences. Who cares? This was not supposed to be about Mrs. Gardner's friends, their private lives and suicides.
This Author even has the audacity to compliment himself, as he proclaims that no other Biographer "has ever" said this or that. The reason they have not Mr. Shand-Tucci is that nobody cares.
Any other biography on this woman and her museum has got to be better than this result, which is so bad it won't even put a person to sleep.
Like another reviewer I would happily return it, but to do so would lower the quality of the inventory that I elevated when I rid them of this nonsense.
The only "scandal" here is the book, and those that let it be printed.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The sentences that never end..., August 22, 2003
This review is from: The Art of Scandal: The Life and Times of Isabella Stewart Gardner (Paperback)
I am an avid reader and I find the subject of Bella Gardner fascinating, and I was incredibly excited to find yet another book about her amazing life! Yet, little did I know that it would take me almost three weeks to slog through this terribly written piece! With little organization and darting from one thought to another, it is barely held together. But, dear reader, the worst is yet to come. Let me give you an example of just one of the "typical" sentences that make up the writing found within, and remember this is just one sentence: "Perhaps her most vivid counsel ever as muse and mentor, into which central venue of Isabella Gardner's life first James and then Crawford and now Sargent have conducted us, that advice reflects the fact that just as it has been argued of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's friendship with Arthur Hallam that although their relationship lasted a mere four years, those "four years probably [were] the equal in psychic importance to the other seventy-nine of Tennyson's life," so with act one of Gardner's and Crawford's affair, which lasted barely two years."
Now I realize how incredibly terrifying this is, and believe me, I have left punctuation, wording and phrasing exactly as they are found in the book. This is but one of three hundred pages of such dismal phrasing. Get the point...
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Much info, gossip....atrociously written, March 5, 2001
A friend recently lent me this book, as I am fascinated with the subject, particularly with regard to Sargent. Unfortunately, Mr. Shand-Tucci's writing makes the book virtually unreadable. I'm halfway through, and will only stick it out in deference to the subject matter. A sample sentence:
A number of Hall's letters to her survive in her papers and his direct, no-nonsense requests for money for financial aid of all sorts, and Gardner's openhanded reponse, as well as her concerns for his health and consequent invitations to rest up at her country estate, all argue for a close mutual understanding and sympathy - as, above all, does the fact - utterly overlooked and ignored until now - that this Oxford graduate's most widely read book of readings was dedicated to Isabella Gardner - a dedication as key to understanding Gardner's role in Boston as the many better-known dedications of literary and musical works to her of which so much is always made.
Painful enough to type, but tortuous to read for 300 pages. How does a writer this stunningly bad get into print?
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