I picked this biography up at a used book sale not knowing anything about the subject, Joe Carstairs, or the author. I quite liked it. Usually I get 3/4 of the way into a biography and lose momentum; I finished this in a plane ride. Carstairs was an intersting woman who seemed to have made an impression on many people she met. Summerscale obviously did a lot of research and gives a lot of solid information without burdening the reader. I've never read such a slim biography that still managed to convey so much. It's interesting that Summerscale was spurred to write this after she was assigned to write Carstair's obituary - this reads something like an extended obituary for a major paper.

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This is an interesting book about a very wealthy and eccentric woman, probably a lesbian, who was born in 1900.
I say probably a lesbian because homosexuality was so repressed and persecuted then (not much different now!)that people who were homosexual were driven to do bizarre things to make them appear "eccentric" rather than "criminal" or "depraved".
This woman had the money to do what she wished and was emotionally damaged in a way that manifested itself with her ever present doll she took everywhere. She was a world class motorboat racer (women could not be such things then!).
A page turner for everyone who is interested in "gender bending" and such social phenomena.

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