Changes

|title=Black Venus

|author=James MacManus

|publisher=Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd

|date=February 2014

|website=http://www.jamesmacmanus.com/

|summary=James MacManus's ''Black Venus'' is a disappointing read. The dynamic between the central characters is flat, and there are far too many cringeworthy moments.

}}

Anyone familiar with the numerous biographies of Charles Baudelaire will know there is an absence in the middle of his life: Jeanne Duval. The facts about this mysterious woman are rather sparse, although it is commonly agreed that she was a Haitian cabaret singer - and Baudelaire's perennial muse. And it is Baudelaire's fascination with Duval that continues to haunt the books published by his critics and admirers alike: just what, they ask themselves, was the great man's obsession with the woman he dubbed his Black Venus? But if there's little more to say on the biographical front, what about in the realms of fiction? What about using the scattered facts to build a three-dimensional Duval, one with a backstory, hopes, and feelings? If you think this is a bad idea, then you're too late, because this is the 'eureka!' moment that spawned James MacManus's exasperating new novel, ''Black Venus''.