Swimming in the former

Book Review: Furious Love-Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century

Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the marriage of the century

I received this book for Christmas not really knowing anything about either Elizabeth Taylor or Richard Burton. Sure I knew that E. Taylor was a big advocate for AIDS research and that she and Michael Jackson were BFF’s but even less did I know of Mr. Richard Burton. Was he related to Tim Burton? Um no, and so I found out.

I have to preface this review with the fact that I’ve seriously been into biography’s as of late. I used to read purely fiction and then I decided that maybe I should read something where I could actually learn something and so I took on the dubious task of reading The Wave, The Botany of Desire and The Moral Lives of Animals (couldn’t finish, too boring). And now I’ve moved onto Autobiography’s/biography’s such as Theodore Rex, Alice and now Furious Love. Can I also say that I rarely read love stories? Moving on to the review…

If someone asked me to summarize this book in one word it would be “WOW.” The authors, Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger, did an amazing job of instantly grabbing my attention and making me feel as if I were a bystander in the whirlwind of celebrity conspicuous consumption that was Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s lives. Not only did I not want to like them for cheating on their prospective spouses but by the end of the book I was actually rooting for them to make it, I was drawn in by the spectacle of their passionate life together. Fueled by alcohol, sex and competition with one another, of course, but still passion that I don’t think I’ve ever had or will have in my life. Too much drama for me. But I digress.

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor seem to have had a connection so acute, so all-encompassing that they smothered each other and yet were still soul mates. I enjoyed the many excerpts from Burton’s personal diary in describing his relationship with Taylor. And I appreciated the complicated, honest-in-your-face that Taylor was. Theirs was a love unparalleled. And I found the book to be an interesting, fast read. I highly suggest it, if not the Hollywood Glitz and Glamour but for the interesting sociological view of what is a “relationship” between two people that loved each other like crazy.