In Alma Mahler, Francoise Giroud provides a spirited portrait of one of Europe’s great femme fatales, ranging from her childhood (she was raised on a steady diet of Nietzche) to her heyday as a leading figure in Europe’s art scene, to her later life as an exile in California and New York.
We meet a woman of remarkable beauty and unconventional mind, the possessor of a fine, demanding intelligence, who was highly conscious of herself as a member of the elite, a woman never truly conquered by her lovers.