A Diva Readies for Her Close-Up

Putting words in a person’s mouth is a tricky feat, and creating a fictional world starring a real-life celebrity is downright dangerous—especially one as legendary as Sarah Bernhardt, who attracted throngs of admirers wherever she went, from her native France to all corners of the globe. Already the subject of several biographies, websites, shrines, and even a novel or two, is there really more to say about her? In his second novel, Adam Braver aims to answer the question with a resounding, and unique yes. It’s to his credit as a storyteller and his audacious talent as a writer that aim becomes success, and the answer is so obvious that one wonders why anyone asked the question in the first place.

Braver, who previously melded real life and fiction in his debut novel Mr. Lincoln’s Wars, to critical acclaim, smartly focuses his attention on one week Bernhardt’s life. It’s 1906, and at 61, Sarah is feeling her age. In the midst of yet another American tour, she’s still every inch the star, but wonders if she can still be the “Sarah with an energy that burst from her eyes, a mouth that would say anything, and a radiance that outshone the moonlight.” Matters are further compounded by the fact that Sarah has been chased out of Los Angeles by the Catholic League of Decency. She and her company decamp to Ocean Beach to mount a production of Le Dame aux Camelias. The title role is one of Bernhardt’s staples, but she is having difficulty relating to the doomed heroine. Is it a change in perspective, or exhaustion?

As Sarah contemplates whether she may truly retire after a spate of farewell tours, several other people are similarly conflicted. There is Max Klein, her beloved “Molly,” the manager who has guided her career, smoked opium with her in dens of iniquity, and who struggles to love and understand his best friend and muse. Abbot Kinney wants to put Ocean Beach on the map, but also wants to own a piece of Bernhardt for himself. And then there is Vince Baker, a cynical journalist for the Los Angeles Herald who is covering the League of Decency story. He didn’t even want to get anywhere near Sarah and her troupe, but finds, to his astonishment, that her current fate eerily parallels his own inner torments.

Braver never veers off-course in his depiction of Sarah Bernhardt at a crossroads. It’s as if the vitality that infused her real-life person is reborn in the pages of this slim novel. Though the Divine Sarah benefits from meticulous research and a strong sense of history and place, it is not chained to mere facts and dry anecdotes. Rather, there is a deep understanding of what makes a true artist tick, and the symbiotic relationship between an actress and her audience:

It is at that precise moment, the one where the last voice has hushed, and a temporary silence stands, that she always knows when she has diseased the entire room, infected everyone there with her presence until they are consumed by her. On some level it does not really affect her, because it is intrinsic to her being; at the very least, it is the oxygen that keeps the being of Sarah Bernhardt the Stage Star breathing. Her dirty little secret is that the rest of the world doesn’t know how critical they are to keeping that Sarah Bernhardt alive. The moment when the room doesn’t take notice is the moment when Sarah Bernhardt wilts and withers away.

As tempting as it may have been for Braver to keep the entire focus of Divine Sarah on La Bernhardt, interspersing Vince Baker’s additional perspective allows for some change in momentum and a valuable contrast. However, the character of Baker suffers some by comparison because he cannot, and never will be such a forceful personality. Braver seems to struggle early on in the novel to give Baker a distinctive voice, and the character’s jaded journalistic musings seem too heavily borrowed from dime-store pulp novels. Fortunately, as the novel progresses, Baker comes into his own as he contemplates his own growing fascination with Sarah:

Baker watched the group and noticed a slight change in their demeanors. It was as if they walked a little taller, somehow ingesting her confidence and charisma by proxy… in an odd way, [he] felt it too. He had the same sense of empowerment from having witnessed something historic, where your place in the world quickly feels more relevant. Your feet known what it is like to fall in the trail of greatness.

What elevates Divine Sarah from a merely good work of historical fiction to something far greater is the quality of the prose. Never pedestrian, there are times when Braver’s turn of phrase perfectly captures a fleeting emotion, a storm of conflict, a sense of total exhaustion. The result is a novel that is truly captivating and a deep exploration of an artist’s sense of self and her relationship with those that love her, hate her, or simply misunderstand her.