An unorthodox biography of women who broke the rules with inimitable style, it is also a thoughtful meditation on the power of the muse, the glamour of art, and the personal sacrifice it exacts. [HarperCollins]
Critic Reviews
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Outstanding
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Booklist Donna Seaman
Connolly's elegantly insightful family portrait, a worthy companion to Virginia Nicholson's Among the Bohemians, raises many still urgent questions about sexism, creativity, and responsibility. [July 2004, p.1813]
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Favorable
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The Independent Jan Marsh
An often hilarious tale.
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Favorable
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Daily Telegraph Claudia FitzHerbert
There is something refreshing about the author's indifference to psychological explanation. The tone is that of the storyteller for whom explanations are a red-herring interruption, the point being how people behave, not why.
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Favorable
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Kirkus Reviews
A generous but ultimately critical assessment of lives conducted with style, if little substance.
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Favorable
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Wall Street Journal David Pryce-Jones
A book about so many similar characters necessarily switches its focus in ways that can be confusing, but on the whole Cressida Connolly tells a coherent and readable story in The Rare and the Beautiful, and a perfect little microcosm of social collapse it is too.
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Favorable
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Washington Post Amanda Vaill
Connolly doesn't shrink from portraying it, but one wishes she had explored a little more fully the connection between the hard, gemlike flame with which the Garmans burned and the human ash that flame cast off.
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Mixed
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New York Review Of Books Gabriele Annan
There is something almost too scrupulously aloof and impartial about The Rare and the Beautiful. One never becomes fond of any of the characters, or even feels sorry for them, and there are plenty of opportunities for that.
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Mixed
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Publishers Weekly
Beyond the personal issues, Connolly doesn't quite capture the qualities that made these siblings special. Despite their apparent talents and passion for life, they come across as people who were famous for knowing famous people.
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Mixed
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The Spectator Anne Chisholm
The trouble is that there was always more style than substance to the Garman sisters, and the same is true of this book.
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Mixed
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Daily Telegraph Virginia Rounding
Because so much is left unexplained about the lives of the Garman family the overall impression is of a stage-set across which flit these shadowy, if weird and wonderful, figures.
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