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Diana in Search of Herself: Portrait of a Troubled Princess

par Sally Bedell Smith

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Diana in Search of Herself is the first authoritative biography of one of the most fabled women of the century. Even those who knew Princess Diana will be surprised by author Sally Bedell Smith's insightful and haunting portrait of Diana's inner life. For all that has been written about Diana--the books, the commemorative magazines, the thousands of newspaper articles--we have lacked a sophisticated understanding of the woman, her motivations, and her extreme needs. Most books have been exercises in hagiography or character assassination, sometimes both in the same volume. Sally Bedell Smith, the acclaimed biographer, former New York Times reporter, and Vanity Fair contributing editor, has written the first truly balanced and nuanced portrait of the Princess of Wales, in all her emotional complexity. Drawing on scores of interviews with friends and associates who had not previously talked about Diana, Ms. Smith explores the events and relationships that shaped the Princess, the flashpoints that sent her careening through life, her deep feelings of unworthiness, her view of men, and her perpetual journey toward a better sense of self. By making connections not previously explored, this book allows readers to see Diana as she really was, from her birth to her tragic death. Original in its reporting and surprising in its conclusions about the severity of Diana's mental-health problems, Diana in Search of Herself is the smartest and most substantive biography ever written about this mesmerizing woman.… (plus d'informations)
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Forget the other 10,000 books on Diana. This is the real story -- of a poorly educated, shallow-minded ninny who took on more than she could handle and paid the ultimate price. ( )
  BrokenSpines | Dec 10, 2008 |
This is the only biography of Diana that I've read. I read it because a reviewer said that unlike most biographers, Smith actually knew both Charles and Diana. It turns out that she had met each of them. Once. Charles paid more attention to her, so he's the good guy. It is most successful at pointing up the futility of trying to make judgments based on contradictory "secret" sources.

I thought that the author frequently showed poor reasoning. The author argues that Diana lied frequently. As an example, she gave Diana's "contradictory" accounts of her wedding day. Noticing that many of them came from the same book, I read the original. Frankly, they struck me as a reasonable representation of the roller-coaster of emotions that one experiences at such a time.

Smith, like too many historian/biographers, has a crippling literal-mindedness for conversations. Most people, relating an anecdote, mercifully stick to the parts relevant to the conversation in which they are recounting them. These are not affidavits, just social chat. And this doesn't even take into consideration unavoidable changes of memory. After splitting, people who were once close friends may be unable to remember what they originally liked about one another. Therefore, I don't consider non-contradictory differences to be lies: usually they relate to context. So Smith once again offers as proof of lying that two of Diana's descriptions of her mother's leaving the family differ. This ignores the fact that her mother left twice, and she might not be talking about the same event. Further, the differences are not contradictory: both could be true and for some reason Diana emphasized different things in the two accounts.

Smith eventually diagnoses Diana as suffering from borderline personality disorder. The reader who has encountered posthumous diagnoses, especially contradictory ones, may make of this what they want. Smith says that her findings show that Diana wasn't the awful person she has portrayed her as being throughout the book; she couldn't help herself. If she seriously meant to convey that, she should have mentioned it at the beginning of the book. At the end, it just looks like a play for publicity and a weasel factor. ( )
  PuddinTame | Jul 8, 2007 |
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Diana in Search of Herself is the first authoritative biography of one of the most fabled women of the century. Even those who knew Princess Diana will be surprised by author Sally Bedell Smith's insightful and haunting portrait of Diana's inner life. For all that has been written about Diana--the books, the commemorative magazines, the thousands of newspaper articles--we have lacked a sophisticated understanding of the woman, her motivations, and her extreme needs. Most books have been exercises in hagiography or character assassination, sometimes both in the same volume. Sally Bedell Smith, the acclaimed biographer, former New York Times reporter, and Vanity Fair contributing editor, has written the first truly balanced and nuanced portrait of the Princess of Wales, in all her emotional complexity. Drawing on scores of interviews with friends and associates who had not previously talked about Diana, Ms. Smith explores the events and relationships that shaped the Princess, the flashpoints that sent her careening through life, her deep feelings of unworthiness, her view of men, and her perpetual journey toward a better sense of self. By making connections not previously explored, this book allows readers to see Diana as she really was, from her birth to her tragic death. Original in its reporting and surprising in its conclusions about the severity of Diana's mental-health problems, Diana in Search of Herself is the smartest and most substantive biography ever written about this mesmerizing woman.

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