Books by the Lake

Middlebrook is a graceful writer, and she did a good job tracking down lots of people to interview. Unfortunately she focused too much on the usual gawking outsider's questions of "how did this woman pull off such a deception?" and asking people repeatedly how could they have been fooled? I wish it had been a more empathetic portrait of someone who successfully lived a man's life for decades; the parts that talk about what it was like to live that life, in show business and in mid-century marriages, are good but could be better.