Behind the Mask

I won this book through Goodreads in exchange for a review.

This book was fine. I didn't dislike it, but I didn't really like it either. The book is broken up into long parts, each named after one of Vita's works or a work she inspired. Some of the part titles worked better than others for me. Mostly I think they were picked because they sounded good for that segment, not because that segment really had anything to do with that work.

The book starts with a court case involving Vita's mother, which happened when Vita was around 20. After that we go back to the beginning of Vita's life and from there it's mostly a linear biography. The beginning of the book felt weird to me, like the author was trying to write like one of the early 20th-c. authors he would mention later on. It was all a bit confusing for the first segment or so. After that the book got much more readable. At this point though, the author got too hung up in Vita's relationships. I understand that relationships make up a large part of someone's life, but it seemed like the relationships took up the majority of the focus of the book. Vita's works were mentioned really only when they were influenced by the relationships. Surely there was more to her life than all these affairs?

I got bogged down with reading this again towards the end (the middle was definitely the most readable to me), though I couldn't tell you why at this point. I'm just glad to have finished it. In the future I would like to read a more standard biography of Vita, as I feel like I still don't know much about her at all.