{"id":689,"date":"2012-02-19T07:46:59","date_gmt":"2012-02-19T13:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/?p=689"},"modified":"2012-02-05T09:01:22","modified_gmt":"2012-02-05T15:01:22","slug":"a-book-of-secrets-illegitimate-daughters-absent-fathers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/a-book-of-secrets-illegitimate-daughters-absent-fathers\/","title":{"rendered":"A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cover<\/a>Holroyd, Michael. A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers<\/em>. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus Giroux, 2011. Hardcover. 241p. $26.00. hardcover. ISBN: 978-0-374-11558-6.<\/a><\/p>\n

Michael Holroyd\u2018s memoir-infused biography will amuse not only those whose
\nhearts flutter for Merchant-Ivory films, but also those who delight in reading about the intersections of artistic lives or lives artfully lived. Holroyd\u00a0employs the Italian village of Ravello as a thread to connect the lives of artists and those in their orbits. He focuses on the stories of two women: Eve Fairfax and Violet Trefusis n\u00e9e Keppel.<\/p>\n

Enchanted decades previously when seeing a Rodin bust in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Holroyd researches its subject and discovers the Victorian-steeped story of a woman without means. With beauty
\nbut without money, the striking Eve Fairfax must marry, and becomes
\nengaged to the fickle Ernest Beckett, who during their engagement\u00a0commissions Rodin to sculpt a bust of his bride-to-be. Although their engagement does not result in marriage, it provides Fairfax with the friendship of a lifetime with Rodin.<\/p>\n

Led by his scholarly curiosity, Holroyd follows Fairfax\u2018s story and those tangential such as those of Beckett\u2018s wives and mistresses. Notably, Beckett has a love affair with the married Alice Keppel, later the mistress of King Edward VII, and fathers a daughter, Violet.<\/p>\n

Holroyd credits his interest in the life of this daughter, Violet Trefusis, to the enthusiasm of Tiziana Masucci, a young Italian academic enamored by Trefusis. In Part II, he introduces the reader to the world of the articulate, imaginative and vibrant Trefusis during a time of crisis: her not-so-closeted affair with writer, Vita Sackville-West. Holroyd beautifully introduces the Edwardian saga of love lost against the backdrop of ancestral homes, genteel social mores, mother-daughter relationships, and literary ambition.<\/p>\n

For those long obsessed with the turbulent love story of Sackville-West and Trefusis, Holroyd does not provide new information or any provocative revelations. Holroyd and Masucci hold that Violet\u2018s literary reputation has been maligned by previous recounts of the affair. However, the LGBT community has never been compelled to choose sides.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it is likely that those with interest have copies of works by both authors in their collections: acknowledging that in love we have all been Violet and we have all been Vita–in the end unequivocally marked by love.<\/p>\n

Without question, the book not only succeeds in furthering Masucci\u2018s mission of engendering interest in literary works by Trefusis, but also in the works of Sackville-West and, of course, the more luminous writers of their acquaintance such as Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey and E.M. Forster.<\/p>\n

Holroyd\u2018s narrative brims with the excitement of discovery and is deft enough to include light meditations on belonging (familial or otherwise), love, possession and longing. The slim book also includes a family tree for
\nreference, a select bibliography, and an index.<\/p>\n

Book of Secrets<\/em> is a splendid companion read to 2011 Stonewall Honor book, Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E.M. Forster<\/em> by Wendy Moffat.<\/p>\n

Recommended for public and academic libraries<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Holroyd, Michael. A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus Giroux, 2011. Hardcover. 241p. $26.00. hardcover. ISBN: 978-0-374-11558-6. Michael Holroyd\u2018s memoir-infused biography will amuse not only those whose hearts flutter for Merchant-Ivory films, but also those who delight in reading about the intersections of artistic lives or lives artfully lived. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[42,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}