The First Actress

March 30, 2020
Gortner (The Romanov Empress) captures the drama and pathos of legendary actor Sarah Bernhardt’s life in this enchanting work. The illegitimate child of a Jewish courtesan, Bernhardt is raised in Brittany until her wet nurse can no longer house her. In 1852, Sarah’s mother, Julie, sends her unloved, eight-year-old daughter to boarding school in Versailles. After Sarah’s theatrical gifts shine in a school play, one of her mother’s longtime patrons helps arrange acting training for her as well as a contract with the august Comédie-Française. The school’s rigid adherence to tradition clashes with Sarah’s questioning approach, and she leaves the Comédie in the first of many stormy changes from one theatrical company to the next. Becoming pregnant by Comte Émile de Kératry, an aristocratic paying lover, she decides to keep the baby—her only child, Maurice—despite the social taboo and the comte’s rejection. After Bernhardt does heroic work as a volunteer nurse and infirmary manager during the Franco-Prussian War, she becomes one of the most acclaimed actors of her age through a mix of talent, hard work, and savvy self-promotion. Skillful first-person narration evokes Bernhardt’s fierce energy and tempestuous liaisons, the vulnerability borne of her wounding childhood, and her struggles against misogyny and anti-Semitism. Gortner does justice to this trailblazing celebrity and her fascinating era.

May 1, 2020

From showing off her pet cheetah around London to allegedly sleeping in a casket, actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) definitely knew how to make an impression. In his latest novel, historical fiction veteran Gortner (The Romanov Empress) explores her rise to fame from her childhood as the daughter of a courtesan to her ascension to one of the most acclaimed (and gossiped about) actresses of her age. Along the way, she promotes an acting method that breaks all the period's established rules, fends off jealous rivals, and encounters many other big names of the era, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, and Oscar Wilde among them. Bernhardt's life was so full of intriguing incidents and affairs that Gortner faces a major challenge in trying to limit her to a 400-page novel (he notes as much in his acknowledgments). VERDICT Parts of the plot feel a little rushed and more time might have been spent exploring some of Bernhardt's choices, but overall Gortner has created a compelling portrait that will certainly whet readers' appetites to learn more about this charismatic figure. Recommended for fans of Melanie Benjamin and Allison Pataki.--Mara Bandy Fass, Champaign P.L., IL

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2020
Before she was the Incomparable or the Divine Sarah Bernhardt, she was the illegitimate and unwanted offspring of a French demimondaine. In his latest biographical novel, following The Romanov Empress (2018), Gortner explores themes pertaining to women's struggle for independence and fulfilment, charting the rise of this nineteenth-century acting legend who became an archetype for Hollywood's divas. Though admonished that, as an actress, to seek recognition is the height of vulgarity, a degradation of one's dedication to the craft, and of the craft itself, for Sarah, acting is but a means to an end. A nonexistent father and toxic mother leave her with a bottomless need for love, affirmation, and acclaim. A literal drama queen, the historical Bernhardt provides a great wealth of material?sleeping in a coffin, keeping pumas as pets, the circles in which she moved with the likes of Victor Hugo and Oscar Wilde?for the creation of a colorful melodrama, equal parts flamboyancy and pathos. Since Bernhardt loved to extravagantly mythologize her own story, she would doubtless delight in Gortner's first-person fictionalization of her extraordinary life.Women in Focus: The 19th in 2020(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)