Almost Famous Women by Megan Mayhew Bergman

Told from the perspective of her caretaker, a nun who lost her own daughter and husband to typhus, the narrator’s emotional attachment to her young charge, and the great lengths she goes to make Allegra’s short life, and, by proxy, her own, bearable, makes for a compelling story. In 1821, Lord Byron deposited his three-year-old daughter, Allegra, in an Italian convent. “The Autobiography of Allegra Byron” is a moving tale of neglect and redemption. Let’s start with the stories that worked. It turned out these women had lived surprising lives, so why did most of these stories fall flat?

Several of the women-Dolly Wilde, Romaine Brooks, Joe Carstairs-knew each other or knew of each other or were lovers and ran in the same circles at a time when women who chose to live openly as bisexuals, lesbians, or artists were ostracized or, in the best case scenario, sidelined. Internet searches revealed subtle linkages that were not disclosed at all, or were merely mentioned in passing, in the book. Bergman’s fascination felt arbitrary and it begged the question, why these particular women? As described in these tales, the women Bergman chose didn’t necessarily live extraordinary lives or create works of art that beg reconsideration their stories seem to have been marginalized because there wasn’t much to say about them beyond that their lives were sad or disappointing.

After reading the collection, this reader wondered whether these narratives hadn’t been ignored or forgotten for good reason. Publisher’s Weekly commended her for this “feminist reclamation” of narratives largely ignored a compilation of 13 fictionalized tales of women including James Joyce’s daughter, Lucia Butterfly McQueen, the actress who played Prissy in “Gone with the Wind” Allegra Byron, Lord Byron’s cast-off daughter and Dolly Wilde, Oscar Wilde’s impetuous, drug-addled, niece. Bergman culled through the annals of history to locate women who brushed up against fame, thanks to proximity to famous people or now-forgotten accomplishments. The premise of Bergman’s new book, Almost Famous Women, is immediately intriguing. Fans of Megan Mayhew Bergman’s first short-story collection, Birds of a Lesser Paradise, which appeared in 2012, have been looking forward to her second collection ever since.

Almost Famous Women by Megan Mayhew Bergman