The Barbizon

I didn't know very much about the Barbizon but I read a review of this book and it captured my imagination. The book was very compelling and enjoyable to me! It's largely a string of anecdotes but the anecdotes are baller. I was reading this at lunch at work and I kept putting it down to announce to the breakroom random things like “this bitch got famous off French onion soup during prohibition!”

Iconic tbh

It's an interesting microcosm of a particular moment in history, and Bren is pretty aware and explicit about the limitations of this history (eg the hotel was white-only for a long time and even after its first Black resident, like....mostly white). But I dug reading about some of the random non-famous residents just as much as I did about Sylvia Plath and Joan Didion. Definitely an enjoyable read if you're interested in the subject!

Taking a journey back through time with this amazing book is a walk through the glass doors of history.

This is one of those books that draws you in, and just continues to wow you on each page that you read. The history was rich, and reading about the different women who passed through the doors of the Barbizon was something that is not easily forgotten!

Great read, and one that I highly recommend!