Shopping Manhattan : The Discriminating Buyer's Guide to Finding Almost Anything Book

Second book in the three-book biography of Robert Graves by his nephew Richard Perceval Graves. I always thought of Graves as someone of extreme capability and intelligence and who could make a success of everything he put his efforts to. This view has been severely changed after reading this account of his years with Laura Riding, an overbearing American poet under whose control Graves wrote some of the books he is best known for. It is hard to think of Riding as anything other than troubled (to put it mildly) and on of the enigmas in Graves' biography is why stuck with her for as long as he did. RPG gives the outside parameters: Laura's intelligence and manipulative nature and Graves own need to worship but the actual chemistry of attraction remains shrouded. I am not sure if it is possible to unshroud it. RPG describes the relationship with so much detail that it brings you so close to events that I found the psychological battles between Riding/Graves and their friends to be taking its toll on my own sanity. The final episode in which Riding decides she wants a new man in her life and manages to drive the wife of that man into a mental ward is shocking. Especially as they are staying in her house and decry her a witch and destroy her belongings in her absence. Graves (and his wife-to-be Beryl) happily participate in the vigil. There is a truth to Graves' extreme capabilities but here he also comes across as extremely weak and controllable.