A grand attempt, this book. Reconstructing a great dance is quite impossible enough, but recapturing a lost star? No. Still, Riley does a a remarkable job; excavating -- so far as I can tell -- every notice and mention the Astaires even got as a team. It's all charming, and really quite interesting, if in the end, never quite satisfying as either biography or art.
My only real disappointment however is that the author does nothing with Adele's second act, in which she knows everybody still, goes everywhere and is still a riot. (She just popped up, for instance, teaching Jack Kennedy to dance in, of all places, Frank Langella's new memoir.) Had I my druthers, I'd as soon Riley had tried writing a more straight forward biography of the siblings, rather than this cultural history of... fizz.
My only real disappointment however is that the author does nothing with Adele's second act, in which she knows everybody still, goes everywhere and is still a riot. (She just popped up, for instance, teaching Jack Kennedy to dance in, of all places, Frank Langella's new memoir.) Had I my druthers, I'd as soon Riley had tried writing a more straight forward biography of the siblings, rather than this cultural history of... fizz.
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