Leaving a Doll's House: A Memoir - Hardcover

The dismal account of actress Claire Bloom's life with author Philip Roth. Bloom, once described by Gore Vidal as, " ... the most beautiful of postwar screen presences and the finest interpreter of Ibsen in this generation," writes that she was entranced by Roth during their first meeting in 1966. A decade later they moved in together, and she was his muse during the late 70s and early 80s. But Roth's abusive temper and bouts with depression made life nearly intolerable. Even so, they married in 1990, only to divorce a short time later. Though Bloom recounts Roth's violence and betrayal in frightening detail, she never explains why she couldn't muster the strength to simply leave him.

In 1982, English actress Claire Bloom (b. 1931) published a memoir, Limelight and After, that focused on her professional achievements. This second memoir reveals her personal life. "Now," she writes, "all the factors have altered, and I am free to tell my story in full." Bloom invests the first half of her narrative with a plainspoken eloquence as she recounts her difficult childhood in London, Florida and New York, and as she writes of her affairs with a series of dashing but unreliable men?including Richard Burton and Yul Brynner?with regret but genuine affection. The heart of the book, though, and no doubt its main selling point, is Bloom's long and bitterly angry account of her 18-year relationship?including a marriage?with Philip Roth, who is portrayed here as a brilliant monster, inventively cruel and manipulative. His seductiveness, writes Bloom, "wasn't charm; it was intelligence." By the end of their relationship, Bloom sees him as a "game-playing, Machiavellian strategist." Roth may nor may not have had it coming, but Bloom's hundred-page aria of ire makes for uncomfortable reading in any case. It seems a genuine cri de coeur, howver, voiced with the sensitivity that distinguishes the rest of this earnest soulful autobiography. Photos not seen by PW. Major ad/promo.
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