BETWEEN THE COVERS
The Dollhouse, the debut novel of former actress and journalist Fiona Davis, is as much about a place as it is about people.
Built in 1927, the 23-storey Barbizon Hotel for Women on the Upper East Side of Manhattan served for most of its history as a home away from home for actresses, models and other women seeking a career in the big city. Men weren’t allowed above the ground floor, curfews were enforced and a strict code of conduct for behaviour and dress was required. Famous real-life residents included Joan Crawford, Sylvia Plath and Grace Kelly.
Davis moves back and forth between the early 1950s and present day as a journalist seeks to uncover past secrets from women who came of age at the hotel and continued to live there thanks to rent-control laws after the building was converted to condominiums in 2005.
Through the Barbizon, this novel is a thrilling peek through a window into another world, giving us a colourful tour of an era, warts and all — jazz, heroin, racism and sexism, not to mention lies, betrayal and murder.