Brenda Maddox
On the Stein Trail
Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice
By Janet Malcolm
Yale University Press 229pp £16.99 order from our bookshop
Good question: how did two Jewish lesbians survive in Nazi-occupied France? Janet Malcolm addresses the mystery. Gertrude Stein and her lover, Alice B Toklas, both from Jewish-American business families, refused all suggestions that they return to the United States or steal quietly into neutral Switzerland. Instead they stayed put, mainly at Bilignin, their village in eastern France, and watched others being rounded up and sent to German camps.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Everyone talks about the light on Hydra, but sometimes there’s a very good reason why everyone talks about something. The light on Hydra is bronze and blinding.'
Joanna Kavenna on Athens, the Inklings, and why Homer thought sheep were purple.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-call-of-the-wine-dark-sea
'Narratively speaking, "Antkind" doesn’t develop. It just continues. It’s a "New Yorker" Shouts & Murmurs squib inflated to Tolstoyan girth.'
@KevPow3 struggles through Charlie Kaufman's mammoth novel, 'Antkind'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-laugh-a-month
Thanks to @Lit_Review for the book review! https://literaryreview.co.uk/from-bombay-to-the-green-benches