Leonora: A novel inspired by the life of Leonora Carrington

As a big fan of Leonora Carrington I expected more about her art and life as an artist, but find just ordinary 'Women's Popular Fiction' thing - love stories, what dress she had or how alluring she was. I's a shame really.At the same time there was an interesting information about her life I did not know before.

Such hard work to read! She had done masses of research on Carrington but slung together lots of disparate facts and called them a sentence and lots of other disparate events and called them a paragraph. It may suffer from it's translators efforts too. So much information on that I stuck with it but not a pleasant book to read. Too many characters who needed explanation and by using both their Christian and surnames at different times became twice as many!

Well written & entertaining. I liked the character of Leonora but I felt some aspects were missing ...Maybe inevitably so. She was indeed extremely beautiful privileged & psychologically challenged & enriched ....but she seemed only partially connected to Mexico & her Jewish second husband. The novel seems unresolved but that might be an accurate reflection of her life & it is after all a novel. She made great art but like the other surrealists discussed - she & they never seemed to have to deal with the reality of poverty - even the politics of Naziism seem removed. They seem to address only the visions inside their heads & maybe this is a privilege not available to everyone. Dare I say that they all seemed extremely bourgeois?The book may appeal to people interested in Leonora's art other sate of mind. If you are interested in Mexico there is not so much to discover as in this book she seems to have led a mainly expat life.

This is someone we all should know so much better!

Excellent story - so true to life

Terrible book , bad writer , boring , very disappointed