The White Blackbird: A Life of the Painter Margarett Sargent by Her Granddaughter

by Honor Moore Narrated by Stockard Channing

Overview

"A striking portrait of a woman artist's struggle for life." -Arthur Miller



Margarett Sargent was an icon of avant-garde art in the 1920s. In an evocative weave of biography and memoir, her granddaughter unearths for the first time the life of a spirited and gifted woman committed at all costs to self-expression.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A chronicle of a high-born, spirited woman's fight for creative expression and her own sanity at the dawn of modern art. (July)

New York Review of Books

"It is a virtue of this autobiographical biography that it succeeds in evoking the unfathomable nature of a personality."

Boston Globe

"Engrossing, beautifully written . . . but also touching in its candor about the flawed character of a beloved relation."

The Nation

"Ambitious and searching . . . as rich in casually telling detail as only an authentic family album could be."

New York Times Book Review

"Haunting and . . . complex . . . part biography, part memoir, of the woman who happened to be [Honor Moore’s] grandmother."

APRIL 2020 - AudioFile

Stockard Channing’s eccentric, canny, and wholly absorbing performance is perfect for this quite riveting biography. The poet Honor Moore follows her bestselling life of her father, Episcopal Bishop Paul Moore, with a study of her grandmother, Margarett Sargent, a gifted painter, Boston Brahmin, and society “it” girl. Margarett is compellingly interesting in the way of Zelda Fitzgerald, except that her worldly and artistic gifts were all her own, not acquired by marriage. Her achievements, flamboyant glamour, social position, mental instability, and bisexuality make for a potent brew. Channing’s tone and accent are perfect, and she is wonderfully in control here, hitting all the right notes in a piece that is as much about class, period, and place as about Margarett’s singular and ultimately shattering story. B.G. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177336671
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	03/10/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos