About the Author

Amanda Vaill is a writer and critic whose work has appeared in numerous national publications. This is her first book. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

Often considered minor Lost Generation celebrities, the Murphys were in fact much more than legendary party givers. Vaill's compelling biography unveils their role in the European avant-garde movement of the 1920s; Gerald was a serious modernist painter. But Vaill also shows how their genius for friendship and for transforming daily life into art attracted the most creative minds of the time: Picasso, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald. (LJ 3/15/98)

"An exhaustively researched and brilliantly rendered biography."
--Los Angeles Times

"[This is] a marvelously readable biography . . . elegantly written."
--The New York Times Book Review

"A brilliant and wise account."
--San Francisco Chronicle