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Overview
Carol Easton, who knew Jacqueline du Pré well, draws on this friendship to create a moving and insightful portrait of a singularly complex person. Jacqueline du Pré (the subject of the recent film Hilary and Jackie) was the music world's "golden girl," with what appeared to many to be a fairytale career and storybook marriage to Daniel Barenboim. But away from her cello, du Pré was achingly human. As a child, she was isolated by her phenomenal talent. As an adult, she was confined to the rarefied, insular concert world. And during the last fifteen years of her life, she lived in the inexorably shrinking world of the invalid, as multiple sclerosis took its toll. The Baltimore Sun said, Carol Easton tells this extraordinary story "with feeling befitting du Pré's own."Synopsis
First time in paperback: A "strong, compelling, and compassionate book" (Boston Globe) about the acclaimed and ill-fated cellist who died at the age of forty-two.
Publishers Weekly
In this sensitive biography an American woman who ``passed time'' with British musician Jacqueline du Pre (1945-1987) during the last years of her life helps explain why so many people fell in love with her persona as well as her incomparable artistry on the cello. Reminiscences of teachers, schoolmates, associates and friends quoted here show the shy, gawky, undereducated girl, the daughter of anti-Semitic parents who herself converted to Judaism and at age 21 married Jewish pianist-conductor Daniel Barenboim. We also see the invalid, the longtime sufferer of multiple sclerosis, the grown woman who giggled a lot, loved to tell and hear dirty jokes (the cruder the better) and who was impatient with hypocrisy, pretension and prejudice. A tragic story told with warmth and understanding. Photos. (May)