Lady Be Good

Starred review from July 15, 2021
A historical novel about the once-famous American socialite Dorothy Hale. Former NBC News producer Hamilton has chosen a subject of her debut novel who's likely best remembered today as the focus of a famous 1939 painting by Frida Kahlo. In the 1920s and '30s, the intelligent, attractive, and sophisticated Hale ran in glamorous circles that included future member of Congress and ambassador Clare Boothe Brokaw (later Luce). Hale tried to break into a career in show business, and history has largely judged her as a thwarted figure--someone whose lack of success in entertainment or in love (she was divorced once and had several ill-starred affairs) eventually drove her to leap from her Central Park South apartment window to her death--the very act that Kahlo immortalized in her aforementioned work, The Suicide of Dorothy Hale. In this novel, Hamilton sets out to tell a much fuller story, taking readers on a lightly fictionalized tour of Hale's upbringing and spending a satisfying amount of time on her complex, loving second marriage to artist Gardner Hale. The narrative also lavishes attention on Dorothy's increasingly deep friendship with Clare, who manages to do in this novel what she always managed to do in real life--get all the best lines: "Courage is the ladder on which all other virtues mount," she writes to Dorothy at one point. At another moment that showcases Hamilton's ear for conversation and talent for pacing, Gardner tells Dorothy, "You know of course that I am happier than I've ever been and will remain so if it's just the two of us forevermore," which prompts Dorothy to remember one of Luce's remarks: "Forevermore is shorter than you think." Overall, the author's narrative is smooth and invitingly readable, wearing its clearly considerable research lightly; her version of Dorothy's doomed relationship with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's adviser and Works Progress Administration administrator Harry Hopkins is surprisingly gripping. The narrative never stoops to easy renditions, and as a result, Dorothy emerges as both a charismatic and vulnerable figure. A smart and touchingly sympathetic fictional portrayal of an enigmatic woman.

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