Mademoiselle Chanel

From the opening pages, C. W. Gortner's Mademoiselle Chanel put me in mind of Melanie Benjamin's work. Like Benjamin, Gortner plunges his reader immediately into the story, in this case the life and times of Coco Chanel. This he does thoroughly, and well, and the bones I have to pick here come only from knowing too much, if you will about Chanel from prior reading. (Thank you, Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life.)

For example, I drove myself crazy thinking I'd made up that Chanel spurned two marriage proposals from Balsan, before confirming that I wasn't going crazy; Gortner had simply played with the facts. Novels such as these often leave the reader unsure where real life ends and fiction begins. I would have liked a bit of clarification from Gortner at the end of the book, but this is a relatively minor quibble, and one that shouldn't bother those who haven't, say, recently read a biography of Chanel.

A bigger quibble is with Gortner's transitions, which often seemed abrupt, and too frequently were used to compress (or entirely erase) entire years in order to move more quickly through Chanel's life. Moreover, the transitions from what was happening in the broader world (World War I, Black Tuesday, Pearl Harbor, D-Day...you know, nothing major) and Chanel's life, often felt forced, jolting the reader from one topic to another with little (or no) warning. Taken together, this quality detracted from the overall book.

I've noted previously that Coco Chanel, orphan-turned-couturier, was almost certainly one of the most remarkable figures of the 20th century. She survived untold hardships and a pretty serious morphine habit (glossed over by Gortner, but remarkable in and of itself) to be the leading light of the French fashion scene for decades. Gortner's work brings this multi-dimensional woman into focus for a new audience, and certainly a wider audience than is likely to read a biography. For that alone, he deserves credit. Although not perfect, Mademoiselle Chanel is still a highly readable and engaging work of historical fiction.