(HarperCollins, $34.99)
I read this book as an antidote to the current continuing crop of stories being narrated by nine-year-old girls, and it certainly is something different.
Rudolph Valentino was the George Clooney of the 1920s, causing women around the globe to swoon in adoration of his swarthy good looks.
Born Rodolfo Alfonzo Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguolla, he came from Italy to seek his fortune in the US and after working as a gigolo and tango dancer (often concurrently) conquered the box office in 1921’s The Sheik.
Unfortunately, his fame did not last. Well, actually, that’s not true. His fame did last, but poor Rudolph did not.
He died of blood poisoning at the tender age of 31, a tragedy so crushing for so many, that there were riots in New York as fans fought to see their idol lying in state.
Daisy Waugh (grand-daughter of Evelyn Waugh, who wrote Brideshead Revisited) has taken these true facts and woven into them the fictional account of a love affair that could easily have happened.
Jenny Doyle is also recently landed in New York, but from England, and with hopeless portrait artist papa in tow. Employed by a wealthy but complicated family, she happens upon magnetic tango dancer Rudy, with whom she falls instantly in love.
Circumstances, however, keep the lovers-to-be apart for many years during which Jenny falls on hard times and Rudy is catapulted to stardom.
If Jenny, at times, needed a swift kick in the seat of her flapper outfit, the lure of what really might have happened kept me turning the pages.
Daisy shows measured skill at threading the factual with the fantastic, but she obviously has a gift for the far-fetched – two of her children are called Panda and Zebedee.
of course, David Bowie’s son Zowie Bowie changed his name to Duncan Jones, so hopefully Daisy’s darlings have inherited some of the family way with words and get to do a little rewriting of their own in the future.
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