Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century, Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger

Howard Terpning, detail of art for Cleopatra movie poster, 1963

(July 22) It took two people to write this? Heh.

Actually, it was really professionally written -- really easy to breeze through, with lots of timely repetition and signposting so you don’t have to think too hard about anything.

The book doesn’t surprise with more inside dirt than I remember from the gossip mags of the time, which built an industry on Liz’n’Dick stories (today’s “Brangelina” phenomenon is a mere shadow in comparison). Still, it’s good at organizing everything into a linear narrative, drawing parallels and pointing out significant turning points.

It was surprising to get to the end of what is touted as the story of a romance and find out the book was really meant to be a biography of Richard Burton -- at least that’s apparently what the authors let on to Elizabeth Taylor it would be, since she wanted a memorial to Burton.

But I guess that’s not a cheat -- it’s clear Burton’s whole life was affected by Elizabeth Taylor, right down to how he’s memorialized.

The Night Watch, Sarah Waters

Clive Branson, Blitz: Plane Flying (1940)

(July 18) I’m still binging on Sarah Waters. This one is set during the blitzing of London in World War II and is third-person... so a departure from first-person faux Victoriana. The structural twist is in the sequence of the narrative; you know you’re going to find out why all the characters are behaving the way they do, and it’s fun to speculate on what those psychological turning points will be.

“Night watch” turned out to mean many different things, none of them dwelt on in a LOOK AT THIS SYMBOL way, which was a nice subtlety.

I liked it a lot, but Fingersmith is still my favourite.