Sarah Bernhardt: The Divine and Dazzling Life of the World’s First Superstar

Much of what is known about this legendary French actress (1844–1923) is recognized as colorful hearsay—which was fomented by Bernhardt herself. In this concise, well-researched biography, Reef faithfully separates the documented from the speculative in tracing Bernhardt’s life from her birth as the daughter of a Jewish courtesan to the three days when “life in Paris halted” to mourn the death of the “Divine Sarah.” After education at boarding school and a convent, where she was baptized into Catholicism and yearned to become a nun, the temperamental 15-year-old was reluctantly admitted to study drama at the Comédie-Française. Headstrong and tempestuous, she was initially an unremarkable actress with an erratic career; by the time she was 24, however, she had become “the star everyone wanted to see,” mesmerizing audiences around the globe. Reef details Bernhardt’s wide-ranging career, acts of patriotism during the Franco-Prussian War and WWI, and intriguing personal life, including idiosyncrasies such as sleeping in a coffin, in prose that alternates between conversational and melodramatic. Well-recounted, if falling short in rendering the drama of Bernhardt’s magnetic performances and extraordinary charisma, this is a solid introduction to an unconventional feminist and international idol. Ages 12–up. (June)