From a Historical Perspective

Jeanine Basinger
Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies
Curator, Wesleyan Cinema Archives
Author of A Woman's View (Knopf, 1993) and American Cinema (Rizzoli, 1994)

"I thought I had already read nearly everything there is about Greta Garbo, but Karen Swenson's biography A Life Apart opened my eyes with its revelations, its authoritative research and, above all, its insight. This is a unique book because it brings a woman's point of view to the story of Greta Garbo, and because it tells her story in a completely new way. Karen Swenson has written about her thoughtfully, provocatively and with a fresh new perspective."

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Actor - Writer - Entrepreneur

"For many years, efforts have been made to capture Miss Garbo's fascinating but elusive personality. Still I venture to suggest that none has succeeded so well as Karen Swenson in her splendid biography of Greta Garbo. Congratulations."

Gavin Lambert
Award-winning screenwriter and TV playwright
Author of biographies on Norma Shearer (Knopf, 1991) and Nazimova (Knopf, 1997)

"The best biography of Garbo. New research has yielded compelling new insights, into the sunrise of her early years in Sweden, her high noon at MGM, the long sunset of her retirement--and into the psyche of a woman as mysterious to herself as to others. Generous and selfish, courting solitude and fearing loneliness, this great romantic actress could never come to terms with her own romantic needs."

Richard Lamparski
Author of the celebrated Whatever Became of... series

"Greta Garbo: A Life Apart is far and away the best read I've had this year. A really superb job."

William J. Mann
Author of Wisecracker: The Life And Times Of William Haines (Viking, 1998)

"What a magnificent job! Karen Swenson's research is impeccable and her skill at sorting through the material and presenting a very human story is tremendous...A Life Apart is a film historian's dream."

Anthony Slide
Author - Editor - Film Historian - Archivist

"Another book on Garbo? No, not another book, but the book on the subject. With a quiet conviction that underlines the strength of her research, Karen Swenson squashes myths and inaccurate summations of the past, and provides us with a detailed, yet highly readable, account of the life and career of the elusive star. Swenson takes the reader from Sweden to America, to Switzerland and the south of France, and ultimately back to Sweden, tracing the development of the legend that is Garbo. I don't think there is a resource, from studio archives to public library, from family friend to local shopkeeper that Swenson has not consulted. She manages to understand more than any other writer before her, the complex, often quite frankly selfish and irritating, individual who was Greta Garbo, but never loses sight of a woman who was increasingly vulnerable and could sometimes act surprisingly, and orifinally, out of character."

The Critical Edge

Syndicated columnist Liz Smith: "A fascinating new biography..."

Publisher's Weekly: "Exhaustively researched and very well written, the book gives as detailed a portrait of Garbo as her mania for privacy allows."

Entertainment Weekly: "Swenson handles her subject's transformation from Swedish schoolgirl Greta Gustafsson to luminous film diva Greta Garbo to low-key Manhattan recluse 'Harriet Brown' with vivid sensitivity."

Richmond Times-Dispatch: "This new biography is the first to capture Garbo from a feminine biographer's perspective, and it benefits also by the biographer's access to much personal correspondence of Garbo's...The result is a thoughtful biography--a thoroughly researched work--that will satisfy both film scholars and movie buffs....Ms. Swenson's Garbo will doubtless prove to be the definitive one about this ever-elusive film legend."

Variety's International Film Guide: "Swenson adroitly blends the private life with the public achievement. Scandinavian by blood, the author writes with an affectionate understanding that eludes many foreign observers of the Garbo phenomenon."

The Silents Majority: "The reward is that this is perhaps the most intimate and insightful exploration of Garbo put to paper....This is Garbo revealed in an intelligent mix of eloquent investigation and articulate myth-shattering."

Want to read more? Go to the full-length review from The Silents Majority using the link above.

Toronto Globe and Mail: "The very good news is that Karen Swenson has not only produced a vital, vivid and probably definitive biography of Garbo: She has produced one of the best theatrical biographies, period."

Ft. Worth Morning Star-Telegram: "Swenson, without fawning or otherwise etching a valentine, reveals a sensitivity keener than that of other Garbo watchers, and a subtly sympathetic disposition. For almost any reader this should be the Garbo biography of choice."

London Sunday Times/Bookshop: "Given that there are already eight Garbo biographies on my shelves alone (only Liz Taylor and Marilyn Monroe outstack her), you could be forgiven for querying the need for a ninth. But the best is the latest, A Life Apart by Karen Swenson. It finally recognises the essential problem with any Garbo biography, which is that her career lasted less than 20 years, after which the life continued for another 50. Swenson's genius has been to capture both aspects of The Two-Faced Woman, as the title of Garbo's last, unhappy film was called. In the remaining half-century, the star saw herself as Dorian Gray, ageing horribly while the picture in the attic stayed ageless. It is a chilling Sunset Boulevard kind of script, and wonderfully researched."