Sargent's Women (Lucey) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
In Sargent's Women: Four Lives Behind the Canvas, [Lucey] does…more of what she does best, creating a rollicking snow globe version of an almost unimaginable world of wealth, crackpot notions of self-improvement and high-flying self-indulgence…woven around an often passionate commitment to, deep admiration for and wide-ranging pursuit of the fine and literary arts.… Lucey is a persistent detective and a bemused, sometimes amused, storyteller, attentive to interesting, hilarious, disturbing detail.
Amy Bloom - New York Times Book Review


Like characters from the writings of Edith Wharton, these women were smart, passionate, willful, adventurous and striking-looking — particularly when immortalized by John Singer Sargent. Their enticing collective mini-biographies make up Sargent’s Women: Four Lives Behind the Canvas, by Donna M. Lucey. We learn something of Sargent’s personality, his technique and his circumstances, but Lucey primarily uses him as a portal through which to glimpse these assertive spirits of the Gilded Age.
Alexander C. Kafka - Washington Post


[A] lyrical meditation on life, love, and art in the Gilded Age.… Sargent's Women abounds with dazzling characters in atmospheric settings.… As rich as [Sargent's] portraits are, the textural evidence in which Ms. Lucey ensnares them is finer still.
Jane Kamensky - Wall Street Journal


[Lucey] delivers the goods, disclosing the unhappy or colorful lives that Sargent sometimes hinted at but didn't spell out.… Sargent's Women is a good read …[and its] chatty pleasures are considerable.
Michael Upchurch - Boston Globe


[T]he fascinating lives of four women affiliated with…Sargent…. Oddly, there is little biographical information on Sargent himself…. Still, Lucey ably pulls these four compelling women out of obscurity with insight and infectious enthusiasm.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) [Lucey's] narrative is engaging and elegant, set in a rich cultural and social framework that insightfully reflects the era. Selected portraits, photos, and helpful notes enhance the text.… [S]killfully written. —Carol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, NJ
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Lucey vividly reveals the hidden truths of [the women's] tumultuous lives…. [A] superlative group portrait… crystal-clear prose… [and] keen insights into what drove these women to break free of their gilded cages.
Booklist


Perceptive…. Lucey chose her subjects well: four women who responded in unexpected ways to the challenges that they faced.… Colorful, animated portraits sympathetically rendered.
Kirkus Reviews