Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life (Jewish Lives)
Enough comprehensive biographies of playwright and memoirist Lillian Hellman (1905–84) already exist to leave scintillating writer and memoirist Gallagher (Strangers in the House, 2006) free to concentrate on the aspects of Hellman’s life that most intrigue her, beginning with her maternal great-grandfather, Isaac Marx. A scrappy German immigrant, he became the first Jew to settle in Demopolis, Alabama, in 1840, where he set up a general store and thrived. On to Hellman herself. Gallagher forthrightly considers the curious connection between Hellman’s famously unfettered sexuality and stark lack of beauty (though her figure was alluring, and her style elegant) and analyzes at length her painful relationship with her true love, noir writer Dashiell Hammett. At the peak of his fame, he helped Hellman become an acclaimed playwright (The Children’s Hour, The Little Foxes), only to lose his own writerly prowess. Gallagher pounces on and decisively dissects the choicest bits in Hellman’s colorful and contrary life of artistic excellence and blinkered radicalism, self-mythologizing and egregious lies, creating a fast-flowing, deeply provocative portrait of a seductive, truculent, and audacious literary powerhouse. --Donna Seaman