Ecstasy
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
From the author of Illuminations, a novel of the imminent composer Alma Mahler, what she sacrificed for love, and how she brought men to their knees.
Coming of age in the midst of a creative and cultural whirlwind in Vienna, young, beautiful Alma Schindler yearns to make her mark as a composer. A new era of possibility for women is dawning, and she is determined to make the most of it.
But Alma loses her heart to the great composer Gustav Mahler, nearly twenty years her senior. He demands that she give up her music as a condition of their marriage. Torn by her love and in awe of his genius, how will she remain true to herself and her artistic passion?
Part cautionary tale, part triumph of the feminist spirit, Ecstasy reveals the true Alma Mahler: composer, author, daughter, sister, mother, wife, lover, and muse. Mary Sharratt has finally given center stage to one of the most controversial and complex women of her time.
A New York Post Must-Read Boook
“Sharratt has made an impressive career fleshing out the lives of women rendered one-dimensional in the pages of history...With this fine work, [Sharratt] has us wanting more.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Alma Mahler is certainly worthy of joining the remarkable women about whom Sharratt has previously written.”—St. Paul Pioneer Press
“This winning historical novel offers an enjoyable portrait of an ambitious woman whose struggles are as relevant today as they were a century ago.”—Publishers Weekly
“[Sharratt] has in-depth knowledge of classical music and turn-of-the-20th-century Vienna…Recommended for readers who like the peaks and valleys of nonstop drama.”—Library Journal
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Both during her life and after, Viennese artist Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel (1879-1964) received countless love letters; Sharratt's passionate and occasionally overwrought novel is another, one notable for its focus on Alma's artistic talent and early feminism as well as her beauty. Sharratt (The Dark Lady's Mask) specializes in dramatizing the lives of women underestimated or overlooked by history, and, though Alma may not seem to fit that model, Sharratt shows her as trapped by a sexist and hypocritical society in which only men were allowed to be artists or have sexual freedom. In Sharratt's account, Alma grows from a musical girl awakened by a kiss from the artist Gustav Klimt to the young woman astonished by professions of love from Gustav Mahler, nearly 20 years her senior and perhaps the most famous musician in music-obsessed Vienna. The novel continues on to Alma's growing resentment at having to tailor her life to Mahler's demands. Despite occasional overwriting (in response to one of Mahler's declarations of love, "a light blazed inside her, her heart beating like the wings of a thousand white doves"), this winning historical novel offers an enjoyable portrait of an ambitious woman whose struggles are as relevant today as they were a century ago.