Elaine Stritch is Lillian Hellman herself, showing her stubbornness and fragility very well. I'm touched by Bruce Davison's calm narration with passion reserved inside.

What I like "Cakewalk" best is no border between stage and audience. Listening to this audio, I feel like I've been living with two writers in the very same place and time, sharing their joy, anger, pain and struggle as a writer and human. All scenes with full-color appear before us, then we are not an observer any more. This will invite you to consider what real relationship is. Peter Feibleman is the greatest natural born artist.

Elaine Stritch is incredible in this recording. Though I have only minor familiarity with Lillian Hellman, this play is simultaneously light and dark, humorous and serious, and a perfect portrait of two artists together through time. I would absolutely recommend it to anyone.

Elaine Strich becomes legendary novelist/playwright Lillian Hellman in this sometimes scathing, often tumultuous, frequently poignant account of Hellman's long term relationship with a man 25 years younger than she. There's wit, there's passion - all delivered by an A-one cast performing live in Los Angeles.

This book is a compelling and fascinating description of the essence of Spain. Although the book dates from the 1960's, when Franco was in power, the most important insights of the book are still helpful. I haven't seen a better description.

Feibleman is the kind of fellow that you'd wish to have over for dinner just to listen to his experiences. An actor and writer, he seems to have been a vivacious traveler: he mixed with people, watching them cook and trying everything.

The book is a journey through Spain and Portugal, describing each region's people, landscape, agriculture, cooking, food and wine. Good pictures and recipes. Although the recipes themselves have been slightly adapted for the 1960's American kitchen's electric ovens and appliances, his narrative always details the authentic preparations and methods.

If you own this book, you will probably read every page (and stain many of them with olive oil).

Reading Lilly: Reminiscences of Lillian Hellman not only illuminates the life of Miss Hellman, it brings a fuller understanding of one's own life to the reader. I recognized certain bits of the author's rare insight into his friend and into himself as authentic feelings of my own--that I was unaware anyone else had ever experienced. Mr. Feibleman has done a great service to Miss Hellman; he has loved her enough to remember her without apology or explanation. It is a masterful work.

This book shows it true colors in the end -Southrn Gothic. The daughters in question are cartoon like creations- the dark one-seemingly passionate and full of vice. Even as the author allows us to empathize with her, she is the charicature. The light one- an angel. the dark one speaks in Cruella Deville type cadences and the light one mutters statements- that are never more than two words. The twist- "Good is really not so good.".If there is artistry in this book, it is in the author's brooding descriptions, but even these become overwrought.

"The Daughters of Necessity" is a fascinating journey into the unconscious world of love and hatred. These two emotions seem to be opposite but exist very close under our unconsciousness. Peter Feibleman draws the fuzzy world very well in a sophisticated and beautiful way with European scent.

How can we get out of no-exit-chaos between love and burden, when we feel a kind of heavy burden from the love "between Father and Daughter" or "between Mother and Son"? No one has an exact answer to this question but we can feel something from the ending of this novel.

This is an enjoyable book for a fans of Hellman's who also like to cook. She collaborated on it with her acolyte Peter Feibleman shortly before her death in the mid-eighties, and the reminisences and food insights that frame the recipes in her half of the book (it's split into "His Way" and "Her Way") have the fuzzy yet engaging and opinionated quality that characterizes her memoirs. I've cooked out of this book many times. One chocolate cake recipe that involves bourbon and almonds is a particular favorite of ours. Reading EATING TOGETHER, you can almost hear Hellman barking at you from beyond the grave for daring to cut into a baked Idaho potato with a knife, or failing to save the duck fat, or slicing the Virginia ham too thickly. But great cooks do tend to feel strongly about the preparation and serving of good food. If Hellman fabricated in her memoirs, it can at least be said of her that she knew her way around in the kitchen, and turned out two or three classics of the American theatre.