Lulu - Samuel Bernstein

She was the laughing girl with the black helmet of hair and the sexy bangs. The new novel Lulu finds film star Louise Brooks in 1928 Berlin playing the role of her life -- a childlike woman named Lulu, whose sexual desires destroy her, and destroy the men in her life as well. Actress and character became joyfully, hopelessly enmeshed in work that blends fiction with non-fiction. Her volatile relationship with her director is at the centre of the book as she grapples with trying to make sense of her life. In life, Louise Brooks was rarely able to balance these elements -- a problem hardly unique to her time. Brilliant people with enormous promise still often soar brightly, then crash and burn. It came too little, and far too late, when Henri Langlois of the Cinmathque Franaise declared decades later, "There is no Garbo! There is no Dietrich! There is only Louise Brooks!"