Janet Malcolm, one of the best critical biographers around, here attempts to decode one of the more unorthodox (and certainly most secretive) literary alliances of the past century — that of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. We get the personal (how did they meet each other, anyway?) as well as the political (how did two Jewish lesbians living in France during WWII survive the Nazis?), all of it infused with intellectual excitement — and written as a model of accessible scholarship.