RMS Titanic: Gilded Lives On A Fatal Voyage (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
After hearing so much about this book I thought I would give it a whirl. The blurbs sounded interesting and the cover was nicely designed (and being susceptible to pretty book covers this is a very important factor).Part of the way into the book the nasty descriptions and tales began. Normally I don't mind reading about historical figures and their flaws; no one is perfect after all and their flaws do just as much to make up their personality as their "perfections" do. But I don't care to hear the sordid descriptions. And that is why I give this three stars.I will say that there is a good deal of information in this book and the writing style is nice, but the inappropriate details ruined it for me. If it hadn't been for that I would have happily given this a five-star rating. I was about five days into kindergarten when the final resting place of the Titanic was located. A couple of years after that I remember getting a children's book describing the disaster, and I can still recall the haunting illustrated image of the ship lying broken on the floor. My interest was piqued, and it's never abated. The Titanic is one of my life-long hobbies, and it's something I can really never get enough of.The Titanic traveling exhibit is in town right now, and a friend and I have talked about going. We've both seen it before, but that's ok. We even talked about centering our next book club meeting around the exhibit and reading something Titanic related. The group didn't seem interested, but in the meantime I found "Gilded Lives..." and decided to read it on my own.As a great Titanic resource, it's not that high on the list. The descriptions of the ship are really secondary to the descriptions of the people, specifically the first-class passengers. Brewster does a decent job of detailing the people who occupied the highest spheres of society (both on and off the Titanic), however, sometimes the narrative gets bogged down by him trying to connect everyone. And he sometimes uses pet names or descriptions from direct survivor quotations instead of names, and that can lead to confusion about who's who and what their particular backstories are.There is some supposition on his part as to actions and fates of passengers, but for the most part it's clear what Brewster is suggesting as probable versus what was reported from the survivors as "fact."The book was good, but my biggest problem with it was that it chronicled the people that you could read about in a myriad of other books. Much has been written about the Titanic, and almost all of it has included the first-class passengers. This is for two reasons: they are the ones who had made a mark on high enough society to leave a marked legacy, and they were the ones who survived in greatest number; the third-class passengers weren't as lucky on either front. That discrepancy means it's the first-class passengers' stories who will be (and have been) told, but that makes it a bit repetitious if you've previously read more than one or two books on the Titanic.
What do You think about RMS Titanic: Gilded Lives On A Fatal Voyage (2012)?
Quite interesting. I felt like I was on the Titanic with them!
—smallworld
