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mwgerard's review
4.0
Considering my obsession with this period in history, and some of its tenants, I cannot believe it took me so long to find this book. I have heard, anecdotally, of the Bright Young People but I knew little about their specifics. Even with this marvelous history as a guide, they are still a fluid, amorphous bunch. Which I suppose was the point.
Read my full review here: http://cineastesbookshelf.blogspot.com/2010/07/review-bright-young-people.html
Read my full review here: http://cineastesbookshelf.blogspot.com/2010/07/review-bright-young-people.html
jlmb's review
2.0
It's impressive, how the author managed to take such an inherently exciting topic and make it dull as dishwater. It's the Jazz Age. Hot new music! Short skirts! Fast cars! Nightclubs! The Charleston! Cocktails! Drugs! Premarital Sex! Youngsters goin' wild!
I thought this book would give me more details about London's media darlings, the cafe society known as the Bright Young People. Instead, Taylor gives short & vague summaries of the famous parties of the era. He hardly mentions the scavenger hunts. Drug use is downplayed dramatically. So are sexual relationships. Even the catty humor of many of the main figures is hardly discussed.
So what does he spend 350 pages talking about? There are a lot - a lot - of detailed summaries of novels. (Have I suddenly fallen into a vat of Spark Notes?) He writes about politics and political campaigns. He gives a huge amount of space in the book to Elizabeth Ponsonby and her relationship with her parents.
Taylor could have easily given the reader footnotes each time a main figure was introduced. Instead, I was constantly putting down the book so I could google a list of names. Why am I doing all the work? How hard would it have been to add at the bottom of the page a line or two about each person? "Son of Lord So & So, Oxford graduate, painter, died of a drug overdose etc"
Even though the initial group were all close friends, I got very little sense of any of the friendships involved. I'm not even sure who slept with whom. The era is just as vague and muddled for me now, as it was before I even read the book. I gave it 2 stars mainly for the few funny bon mots Taylor included and for the photos.
* When someone is spraying too much perfume - "My dear, you're not putting out a fire"
* Mr Byron has designed an original present....it is a book plate and bears the legend 'Stolen from Bryan and Diana Guinness'
* When some local rural toughs start shouting "sissy" at Eddie Gathorne-Hardy he quickly retorts "That's Lady Sissy to you!"
*When Stephen Tennant's father asked him what he wanted to be in life, Stephen responded "A great beauty, sir."
* Elizabeth Ponsonby's father talking about her - Her preference for disreputable people is, I'm afraid, quite incorrigible."
Man, what a waste of a subject matter!
I thought this book would give me more details about London's media darlings, the cafe society known as the Bright Young People. Instead, Taylor gives short & vague summaries of the famous parties of the era. He hardly mentions the scavenger hunts. Drug use is downplayed dramatically. So are sexual relationships. Even the catty humor of many of the main figures is hardly discussed.
So what does he spend 350 pages talking about? There are a lot - a lot - of detailed summaries of novels. (Have I suddenly fallen into a vat of Spark Notes?) He writes about politics and political campaigns. He gives a huge amount of space in the book to Elizabeth Ponsonby and her relationship with her parents.
Taylor could have easily given the reader footnotes each time a main figure was introduced. Instead, I was constantly putting down the book so I could google a list of names. Why am I doing all the work? How hard would it have been to add at the bottom of the page a line or two about each person? "Son of Lord So & So, Oxford graduate, painter, died of a drug overdose etc"
Even though the initial group were all close friends, I got very little sense of any of the friendships involved. I'm not even sure who slept with whom. The era is just as vague and muddled for me now, as it was before I even read the book. I gave it 2 stars mainly for the few funny bon mots Taylor included and for the photos.
* When someone is spraying too much perfume - "My dear, you're not putting out a fire"
* Mr Byron has designed an original present....it is a book plate and bears the legend 'Stolen from Bryan and Diana Guinness'
* When some local rural toughs start shouting "sissy" at Eddie Gathorne-Hardy he quickly retorts "That's Lady Sissy to you!"
*When Stephen Tennant's father asked him what he wanted to be in life, Stephen responded "A great beauty, sir."
* Elizabeth Ponsonby's father talking about her - Her preference for disreputable people is, I'm afraid, quite incorrigible."
Man, what a waste of a subject matter!
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