- Hardcover
- Publisher: Scribner (Sep 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0743243226
- ISBN-13: 978-0743243223
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
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Product Description
Spectator
'Seymour writes with an elegance and verve her subject would have appreciated . . . [An] inspiring rediscovery'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Sunday Times
'Seymour’s descriptions of [the races] are spine-tingling . . . [She] excels in conveying the wider social-historical context'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This enthralling story of the spirited and brilliant female racing driver Helle Nice reads like a modern version of a Balzac novel.
It chronicles her intensely adventurous, glamorous and glittering career driving Bugattis, Alfas and other assorted exotic machinery in the south of France, Italy, Brazil and the United States. This with the added frisson of knowing that the girl in question was a drop-dead gorgeous dancer, nightclub stripper and wildly promiscuous.
After gathering all the glittering prizes, her life descends inexorably with the hubris and inevitability of Greek tragedy into desperate poverty,loneliness and ill-health, cruelly neglected and disinherited by her provincial and slightly retarded provincial French family, abandoned and robbed by her lover. Her downfall was precipitated by a vicious betrayl at a glamorous party when she was publicly accused by the famous and 'cultivated' driver Louis Chiron of collaboration with the Gestapo during the occcupation. She ultimately lives in the care of a benevolent French charity until her death in utter obscurity. Her plain, dull sister Solange vindictively omits her name from the family gravestone, so tormented was she by a primitive and gnawing envy of her joyful and champagne-filled life. Pure Balzac transported to our century.
But the book is far more than that. It is a brilliant evocation of the almost unbelievably reckless nature of 1930s racing. It describes the violent deaths from tremendous accidents that often resulted on the banked courses and unregulated tracks that were so popular in those days. Helle herself crashed in Brazil killing and injuring many spectators - something that haunted her for the rest of her life. It paints a wonderfully eloquent picture of the aristocratic temperament of those times, courting hazards with ease and negligence; a portrait of those rash, wealthy sons who diced with their lives among the other esoteric pleasures of the Bugatti racing circle. Miranda Seymour's economical style portrays these tragic, even spectacular deaths like so many stabs to the heart. Shocking and desperately moving accounts. The arbitrary nature of torture and execution in Nazi occupied France is similarly treated with fierce economy.
I have only driven a Bugatti T35 once in my life and that around Hamptead Garden Suburb! Yet it was the greatest driving experience I have ever had - the car absolutely alive with the nervous and fractious energy of an Arab stallion. The sound of the engine courses through one like electricity. Seymour captures this pace and excitement in her book as it breathlessly bowls along like a Bugatti itself.
I am also an author with a passion for vintage machinery and the fabulous style of the politically incorrect 1930s - such creatures as Helle Nice we shall never see again. Oh that I had had the luck to come across this wonderful story. Please God, someone make a movie of it! Do read this fantastic biography. Like the author, I too have fallen in love with the ghost of Helle Nice.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a truely wonderful read. Charting the life of Helene Delangle otherwise known as Hele Nice through her younger years (in the 1920's) as a dancer onto her career in the male dominated world of Grand Prix motor racing (through the 1930's). Her career in motor racing was interrupted by a very serious accient and then finally destroyed, after the war, by a legend of the sport. She ultimately faded into poverty before dying in Nice in 1984. Tragically she is not even remembered on her grave stone. This is a story that had to be told and Miranda Seymour tells the story wonderfully. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
Format:Hardcover
I found the book more than GOOD ! It is written with great sensibility and accuracy resulting from a great research !
The story of this woman-racer is quite unique ! As a child I remembered her name , having been a great fan of Gran Prix racings, and checking on Google if the name I recalled was correct and what had happened to her..I found out about this book that I immediately ordered and enjoyed reading !! I suggested to other friends to buy it...and I wonder how come it has not been translated in Italian !!!
(or french ????). it is a splendid story for a good film !
Bravo to mrs M. Seymour !!
(Marco Antonini)
The story of this woman-racer is quite unique ! As a child I remembered her name , having been a great fan of Gran Prix racings, and checking on Google if the name I recalled was correct and what had happened to her..I found out about this book that I immediately ordered and enjoyed reading !! I suggested to other friends to buy it...and I wonder how come it has not been translated in Italian !!!
(or french ????). it is a splendid story for a good film !
Bravo to mrs M. Seymour !!
(Marco Antonini)
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