Dead Glamorous: The Autobiography of Seduction and Self-Destruction - Hardcover

Morin, Carole

3.65

23 ratings by Goodreads

9780879517502: Dead Glamorous: The Autobiography of Seduction and Self-Destruction

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0879517506 ISBN 13: 9780879517502

Publisher: Overlook Books, 1997

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The Scottish journalist describes her life in pursuit of glamour and luxury, including clothes, vacations, homes, and friendships with the rich and famous

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From Kirkus Reviews:

Another woebegone childhood propels this thin mix of style and attitude. Like medieval mendicants parading their wounds for alms, the authors of triste contes such as this one avidly flourish their deepest misfortunes--abuse, incest, suicide, less-than-perfect relatives--as if suffering alone were reason enough for a book. These disjointed recollections of the author's sad, nasty family are, ultimately, too familiar. It is a given that novelist Morin (Lampshades, not reviewed), a weekly columnist for England's The Spectator, does not like her parents, especially ``Fuckwit,'' her lumpen, passively offensive father. And her relatives are all pathetic and disgusting saps. Friends turn out badly. Melancholy is always threatening. Then there's the suicide of her beloved (perhaps too beloved) brother John, which provides as much of an overarching narrative as this book possesses: His death echoes across almost every page. If John were presented as a real person instead of a cardboard palimpsest for Morin's egocentric absorption, this could have been genuinely moving. But Morin seems incapable of the required level of empathy. When she runs out of familial miseries to exploit, she coughs up recherch‚ musings on style and the movies, trying to add a mythic, or at least ``glamorous,'' overlay to her unhappiness. We're treated to reflections on the blonde mystique, rehashed fanzine appreciations of Kim Novak, Montgomery Cliff, et al., and pens‚es on the intersections of cinema and life that are neither fresh nor startling. The most stylish thing here is Morin's prose, which has an occasional snap and crackle to it, unlike her affected pose of Catholic nihilism, rooted in the misguided notions that cynicism is easy and that salvation is a byproduct of despair, rather than its apotheosis. Style without substance, glamour without beauty, form without function. -- Copyright �1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Humor is unpredictable. Like wine, sometimes it travels well, sometimes not. Morin, author of Lampshades, a columnist for the New Statesman and a minor cult figure in England, has written a self-conscious autobiography that is a wacky cross between Monty Python and the National Enquirer. Her writing is an acquired taste. At the heart of this picaresque journey is her relationship with Maddie, her joyously vulgar, unexpectedly rich mother who is herself surrounded by her six wildly caricatured sisters. An accompanying theme is the suicide of the author's brother John, who at 26 jumped to his death from the roof of a building owned by their grandfather. Despite the occasional flashes of outrageous camp, it is hard for the uninitiated reader to know whether to laugh or cry. There is a harsh note of desperation behind the relentless self-satire that, finally, becomes painful. An odd book, unlikely to gather much of a following in the U.S.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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