Holy Skirts
RENÈ STEINKE
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5 reviews (2005) (368p)Visit this book's Amazon.com page >>
| Book Description |
| After running away from home and living a scandalous life in Berlin, the beautiful Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven arrives in New York City with her husband. The marriage soon flounders and Elsa finds herself on her own. An unusual and talented woman, she takes up modelling and sculpting and exhibitionism, become more and more outrageous. She's often arrested for public nudity and shoplifting, but she's so good at jumping from the police wagon that she usually escapes. At the centre of the Dadaist circle, she even transforms herself into a work of art. In love with the artist Marcel Duchamp, she makes him the subject of several of her sculptures and poems, one of which reads "Marcel, Marcel, I love you like hell, Marcel." She's an early version of Madonna or Courtney Love. In addition to telling the story of a fascinating woman, the novel also depicts a time of cataclysmic change--through a world war, the popularization of technology, the advent of the automobile, the proliferation of cities, and enormous changes in the lives women. |
| Renè Steinke Award Stats |
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| *Major Prize = Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, National Book Award, Man Booker Prize, and PEN/Faulkner Award |
