The House of Impossible Beauties does not provide full biographies of its leading figures such as Angie Xtravaganza, Venus Xtravaganza or Dorian Corey, perhaps using fiction where their friends and acquaintances were unable, or unwilling, to fill in the gaps, but it does offer a convincing insight into the world in which they lived. (I particularly liked the recurring disdain for the musical Cats.) Many of these lives were all too short, and deserved far more than Paris Is Burning’s 78 minutes. The scenes of love and support between the characters have a kindness that more than matches the sadness, and the dialogue, peppered with early 80s disco or TV references and “Spanglais” dialect, is frequently hilarious. Photograph: This is not a bleak novel, however – far from it. Larger-than-life characters in Paris is Burning.
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