Femme Fatale: Love, Lies, and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari

by Pat Shipman

Book Overview

In 1917, the notorious Oriental dancer Mata Hari was arrested on the charge of espionage; less than one year later she was tried and executed--charged with the deaths of at least 50,000 gallant French soldiers. The mistress of many senior Allied officers and government officials, even the French minister of war, she had a sharp intellect and a golden tongue fluent in several languages; she also traveled widely throughout wartorn Europe, with seeming...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060817283
• ISBN13: 9780060817282
• Release Date: July 2007
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 450 Pages
• Weight: 1.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Wonderful!

I read for escape, and when I can also learn something along the way then it's even better. Shipman gives us a wonderfully written and fast-paced exciting book. You really feel sympathy for Mata Hari and pain at the horrible traps she walked into. What a wonderful snap-shot of that time in European history. I truly enjoyed every word in this book and highly recommend it.

seems neat to me

So, I purchased this book at the behest of some NPR reporter or another, and I did so with my friend Amy in mind. Although not an avid reader, I will try to coax her into this book with the promise of great scandal. Months from now, I envision myself demanding the return of this book so I can read it (as I am sure she will have not) and I will enjoy it thoroughly. Up to this point though, I cannot attest to it's content. The cover is very lovely, though.

Mata Hari, Spy or Dupe?

Book goes quite in depth with Gerta's early life in the Dutch East Indies with her husband, but it helps to understand her personality. This poor wretch is branded only as a spy by the French who wanted to spy on the Germans and being refused, trumped up charges against her. Seems she was only an exotic dancer that enjoyed men in and out of uniform. Good read, only boring at times. Recommended.

Emme Fatatle

A good biography of one of the 20th. Centuries most interesting spys/nonspy...Professor Shipman writes a no hold barred tale of Mata Hari...The book is really two stories. The first is how Margaretha Zelle born of Dutch parents became Mata Hari...Margaretha Zelle was a woman of enormous talents in language who mastered besides her native Dutch, German, French, English and Spanish along with with the languages of the Dutch East Indies where she pent her years as a young woman married to a Dutch Colonial Officer...Marrage, an abusive husband and the hard colonial life were not for her and after a few years she divorced here husband and returned to Holland...This was the begaining of her transformation from a wife and mother to a performer and a high priced courtesan...The second story was how she got involved in espionage and spying or not...Professor Shipman lays out the "factual information" we have on Mata Hari and then leaves it to the reader to determine if Mata Hari was a spy or because of her notarity and the fact that she had been a paid mistress of some many powerful men it was best to silence her...The reader has to determine if she was an agent for the Germans, French, both or some other country, the facts are not clear...If you like an honest well scribed book then you will enjoy Femme Fatle, but don't expect the author to spoon feed you any speculative ending.

Double-Dealing Sexists vs. Naive Self-Promoter

She was a slut, so she *must* have been a spy. In the hysterical waning days of World War I, illogic like that put Mata Hari in front of a firing squad. And when you need to blame someone for half a million dead French soldiers, what's wrong with a little patriarchal thinking? Hauled off to the Dutch West Indies by her brutal military officer of a husband, Margaretha Zelle MacLeod remade herself in the Paris of the Belle Époque as an "international woman" famous for her pseudo-Hindu -- and, more to the point, nearly nude -- dances. Lascivious and famous for it -- she craved a man in uniform -- she wasn't exactly inconspicuous. When French spymasters tried to make use of her, it was like the CIA getting angry because they'd recruited Madonna and now everybody was recognizing her. Mata Hari's notoriety and world travel make her the subject of a new biography about once every decade. The contribution of Pat Shipman's *Femme Fatale: Love, Lies, and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari* lies mostly in detailing the lives of army wives in Indonesia (stifling heat, concubines, syphilis) and in sifting the evidence (mostly manufactured) of Mata Hari's ostensible spying on behalf of Germany. Trained as an anthropologist, Shipman veers toward academese in the West Indies chapters, however; she tends to quote primary documents (legal, military and amatory) too extensively. Mata Hari, meanwhile, always impulsive but enterprising, drifted to Paris but refashioned herself as an "artistic" dancer; she sought out officers, then drifted into dabbling at espionage. Amusingly, she didn't know or much care about troop movements in the Great War (unless they affected her Russian boyfriend). Oh, sure, she had a motive against the Germans: They'd confiscated her white cloak and several of her favorite furs. Caught at the nexus of sexism, scapegoating and her own naiveté, Mata Hari was an unsuspecting butterfly caught in a master manipulator's net. (There are bumbling police inspectors in her story, but also double agents.) Emphasizing that Mata Hari loved men too much and the truth too little, Shipman doesn't push the feminist angle. But today, if they only had flimsy evidence against her, would they be able to shoot Madonna?