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3.67 AVERAGE
3.67 AVERAGE
5 alluring stars to Ecstasy! ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
(Last vacation review, I promise! 😉)
In college, I had a poster of Klimt’s painting, The Kiss, hanging on my dorm room wall. It was sultry and magical. My love for art and art history was sparked by my beloved high school art teacher. I think she saw a lack of confidence in me, and in retrospect, I feel she took every opportunity to bring that out. I yearn for books about art as a result, especially in my favorite genre, historical fiction. All of that to say, when I saw Ecstasy’s cover and the synopsis, I knew I had to read this book.
Set at the turn of the twentieth century in Vienna, Ecstasy is the story of a most-intriguing woman, Alma Schindler. Daughter of an artist, Alma is not only a brilliant pianist, she is a talented composer. She has the opportunity to seek further training to become a star composer, but her mother would not let her because she was female.
Alma’s first kiss was by none other than Gustav Klimt. She later marries Gustav Mahler, a composer, who forbids her music and wants her to be a wife and mother. Married for many years, Alma and Mahler have an up and down marriage, but Mahler is quite obsessed with Alma. She has an affair with Walter Gropius, a famous architect, and later moves on to Franz Werfel, novelist and poet. Schindler has each of these men entranced with her. She is the muse for each and probably the greatest love.
Ecstasy is very much about Alma’s coming of age during a time when women had strict expectations, but culturally and creatively, an era of possibility was simultaneously opening up, and Alma fully embraces it. She is a woman ahead of her time, testing the boundaries that try to contain her, jumping over them, and flourishing with possibilities that she creates for herself.
Alma Schindler had a full life, and in reading her life’s story, I had to be patient with the details and settle in to this book. When one woman is a composer, an author, a daughter, a mother, a wife, a lover, and a muse for various artists, there is much content to be shared! I found Alma enchanting and energizing, and I wish that more people knew her story.
Thank you to Mary Sharratt, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Edelweiss for the ARC. Ecstasy will be released on April 10, 2018.
(Last vacation review, I promise! 😉)
In college, I had a poster of Klimt’s painting, The Kiss, hanging on my dorm room wall. It was sultry and magical. My love for art and art history was sparked by my beloved high school art teacher. I think she saw a lack of confidence in me, and in retrospect, I feel she took every opportunity to bring that out. I yearn for books about art as a result, especially in my favorite genre, historical fiction. All of that to say, when I saw Ecstasy’s cover and the synopsis, I knew I had to read this book.
Set at the turn of the twentieth century in Vienna, Ecstasy is the story of a most-intriguing woman, Alma Schindler. Daughter of an artist, Alma is not only a brilliant pianist, she is a talented composer. She has the opportunity to seek further training to become a star composer, but her mother would not let her because she was female.
Alma’s first kiss was by none other than Gustav Klimt. She later marries Gustav Mahler, a composer, who forbids her music and wants her to be a wife and mother. Married for many years, Alma and Mahler have an up and down marriage, but Mahler is quite obsessed with Alma. She has an affair with Walter Gropius, a famous architect, and later moves on to Franz Werfel, novelist and poet. Schindler has each of these men entranced with her. She is the muse for each and probably the greatest love.
Ecstasy is very much about Alma’s coming of age during a time when women had strict expectations, but culturally and creatively, an era of possibility was simultaneously opening up, and Alma fully embraces it. She is a woman ahead of her time, testing the boundaries that try to contain her, jumping over them, and flourishing with possibilities that she creates for herself.
Alma Schindler had a full life, and in reading her life’s story, I had to be patient with the details and settle in to this book. When one woman is a composer, an author, a daughter, a mother, a wife, a lover, and a muse for various artists, there is much content to be shared! I found Alma enchanting and energizing, and I wish that more people knew her story.
Thank you to Mary Sharratt, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Edelweiss for the ARC. Ecstasy will be released on April 10, 2018.
Great read; illuminating insight into the lives of some women who lived in turn -of-the-twentieth century. Women who lived what we would call privileged lives in Europe & America, but rich with universal theme common to all women. Also, an enticing and educational study the art world of the time makes for a fascinating read.
My review of this book appears in Historical Novels Review 84 (May 2018):
This is an intimate deep-dive into the thoughts of the composer Alma Schindler Mahler during her marriage to Gustav Mahler. Her upbringing in Belle Époque Vienna was intellectually and artistically privileged, but her choice to give up composing to support her celebrated husband’s career creates numerous opportunities for conflict and drama. Her up-and-down cycles of elation and depression, however, soon weary the reader, because Alma’s reactions are so oppressively self-centered, giving Sharratt few chances to bring to life any of the artistic geniuses with whom Alma interacts.
The one exception is the brash American musicologist Natalie Curtis, who offers Alma a glimpse into the possibilities the new century and the New World offer an independent artist-scholar—but her scenes are all too brief. Instead, readers get more description than they probably need of Alma’s many erotic obsessions and disappointments.
For fans of the setting, however, Sharratt’s considerable skill with descriptions of gorgeous Alpine countryside and the equally sumptuous social and musical soirées may be enough. The novel actually becomes more compelling as Alma’s social circle widens, and I found myself wishing that Sharratt would extend the narrative into the much more interesting second half of Schindler Mahler’s life, when she breaks free from the bourgeois constrictions of her life as Mahler’s muse and forges an identity for herself as arts patron, composer, and feminist.
This is an intimate deep-dive into the thoughts of the composer Alma Schindler Mahler during her marriage to Gustav Mahler. Her upbringing in Belle Époque Vienna was intellectually and artistically privileged, but her choice to give up composing to support her celebrated husband’s career creates numerous opportunities for conflict and drama. Her up-and-down cycles of elation and depression, however, soon weary the reader, because Alma’s reactions are so oppressively self-centered, giving Sharratt few chances to bring to life any of the artistic geniuses with whom Alma interacts.
The one exception is the brash American musicologist Natalie Curtis, who offers Alma a glimpse into the possibilities the new century and the New World offer an independent artist-scholar—but her scenes are all too brief. Instead, readers get more description than they probably need of Alma’s many erotic obsessions and disappointments.
For fans of the setting, however, Sharratt’s considerable skill with descriptions of gorgeous Alpine countryside and the equally sumptuous social and musical soirées may be enough. The novel actually becomes more compelling as Alma’s social circle widens, and I found myself wishing that Sharratt would extend the narrative into the much more interesting second half of Schindler Mahler’s life, when she breaks free from the bourgeois constrictions of her life as Mahler’s muse and forges an identity for herself as arts patron, composer, and feminist.
If you know me, you know I like to get high and watch Ken Russell movies (but not The Devils, never The Devils). So I've seen "Mahler" - not something everyone can claim methinks.
But if I'm being honest, I checked this book out of the library because I loved the Mucha-inspired cover. It was a slog at first, but once I got into it I did get something from the experience. For all that we think reading historical fiction, even that based on real people, will be an escape, there's no denying being a woman at the turn of the 20th century was no picnic, and you had to in most cases give up your artistic aspirations to be your husband's "helpmate," and also take copious visits the sanatorium after your miscarriages - as if taking strychnine after them wasn't enough. Laws!
So if Sharratt's version of Alma Mahler wants to complain over and over again about how her life turned out, I GET IT.
Anyway. Started slow, picked up, got better. Doesn't cover her entire life (how could it?!) but up to Gustav's death.
Also recommend: "The Bride of the Wind," a decent move about her life.
But if I'm being honest, I checked this book out of the library because I loved the Mucha-inspired cover. It was a slog at first, but once I got into it I did get something from the experience. For all that we think reading historical fiction, even that based on real people, will be an escape, there's no denying being a woman at the turn of the 20th century was no picnic, and you had to in most cases give up your artistic aspirations to be your husband's "helpmate," and also take copious visits the sanatorium after your miscarriages - as if taking strychnine after them wasn't enough. Laws!
So if Sharratt's version of Alma Mahler wants to complain over and over again about how her life turned out, I GET IT.
Anyway. Started slow, picked up, got better. Doesn't cover her entire life (how could it?!) but up to Gustav's death.
Also recommend: "The Bride of the Wind," a decent move about her life.
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I picked this book up for its beautiful cover! But I found an impeccably written book that had me simultaneously in awe and upset of a different time. This book truly captured wanting to be fully yourself despite it being at odds with societal norms and the havoc that it can wreck on mental health. I am left feeling inspired and more knowledgeable about an area I wouldn’t have known much at all about!
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This fictional account of Alma Mahler's life was an emotional rollercoaster. Although a longer read at 400 pages, Sharratt pulled me through ecstatic highs and painfully lonely lows.
It's crazy to think she only lived a hundred years ago. Sharratt writes so convincingly to describe the box that Alma has to conform herself into, it made me so angry. She squashes her own vivacity and sacrifices emotional needs to be with Gustav. As a woman, the only way she can keep her femininity and dignity is to give up her dreams and chase greatness only through proximity to a man.
Would recommend to anyone who enjoys historical fiction, music, and emotional reads. I'm docking a star because although Alma and Gustav are portrayed relatively well as complex and dynamic characters, the positive feelings didn't balance out enough with the negative.
It's crazy to think she only lived a hundred years ago. Sharratt writes so convincingly to describe the box that Alma has to conform herself into, it made me so angry. She squashes her own vivacity and sacrifices emotional needs to be with Gustav. As a woman, the only way she can keep her femininity and dignity is to give up her dreams and chase greatness only through proximity to a man.
Would recommend to anyone who enjoys historical fiction, music, and emotional reads. I'm docking a star because although Alma and Gustav are portrayed relatively well as complex and dynamic characters, the positive feelings didn't balance out enough with the negative.
God I hated this book. I needed to read an historic fiction for a class and this is what I chose. Had I the option, I'd would have stopped reading a quarter of the way through. Alma is a horrible cliche of everything hateful that is female.
Great but hella depressing. Loved how complex the sexism and relationship dynamics were. Loved how the writing went from in the moment conversations to reflective to overview of time passing. Good balance of that.
Historical fiction set in Vienna? Sign me up! This is the story of Alma Mahler that starts when she is a young woman studying performance and composition in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna. Alma is intense, talented, and romantic, and these attributes shape her life as she makes sense of her place in the world. She writes innovative music, is a prominent figure in Viennese artistic society, and has many tempestuous love affairs and marriages with men of high stature. This was lush and romantic. I loved it.