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Adrienne

My only books were women's looks

Trying to move from GoodReads. Hope this site is a good fit!

Currently reading

The Two Krishnas: A Novel
Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla
The Diviners
Libba Bray
My Blue Notebooks PA: The Intimate Journal of Paris's Most Beautiful and Notorious Courtesan
Liane de Pougy

American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White: The Birth of the "It" Girl and the Crime of the Century

American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the "It" Girl and the Crime of the Century - Paula Uruburu A biography of Evelyn Nesbit, the beauty who became the symbol of the Gilded Age. Often 'beauties of the age' don't stand the test of time, but Evelyn is just as beautiful now as she was considered to be back in 1901. At 16, Evelyn became one of the first 'super models'. At 21, Evelyn became the center of the 'crime of the century' when her husband Harry Thayer murdered the famous architect Stanford White, who had been her lover at the tender age of 16. White later would be vilified as a man who ruined young girls, and he certainly took advantage of Evelyn, drugging her and robbing her of her 'virtue', but Thayer, was no better, a jealous and mentally unstable man who raped and beat Evelyn after she confessed her 'loss of innocence' at White's hands.It's a story that illustrates very harshly just how powerless a young girl could be - and indeed still can - in the hands of vicious, brilliant men, with no one to guide her and a life that offered her no concept of normalacy. Evelyn's story was gripping - I couldn't put the book down - but at the same time it's very, very disturbing. This is Definitely not an easy read. I couldn't stop thinking about it. The whole time I was reading it, I felt like I was trapped in a nightmare. I literally lay awake at night, unable to stop thinking about it. I told Evelyn's story to everyone I talked to, trying to make sense of it, trying to lose that sense of horror.