The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free

Man, I wanted to like this more than I did. Three stars maybe isn't fair, but four stars would be too much. And I liked it quite a bit in places. There are a lot of good anecdotes told and interesting people featured. But.

I don't understand what this book was trying to do. The first few and last chapters are about The Barbizon, which is what the book is supposed to be about. But the whole middle of the book is really about Mademoiselle magazine. And that was super interesting! But it didn't really fit the book as presented, even though Mademoiselle was closely linked with the hotel for much of its existence. If the title/subtitle had just been changed to The Barbizon and Mademoiselle, I wouldn't have such issues and would rate this higher. (Maybe that's bad of me since it was still an interesting book. I don't know.)

I wanted to like this more than I did, despite all the interesting information. I just didn't understand what the point of the book was. It's like Bren found all these interesting stories that vaguely connected to the same place and decided to make a book out of it. I'm still glad I read it, but it wasn't what I wanted. (Though now I do want to read more about Sylvia Plath, so sort of good job, book.)

(Also, I don't know who edited/proofread this, because they didn't get Gypsy Rose Lee's name right.)