Strapless is easy to read but contains too many detailed accounts which don't lend to the story. Is this a story of Virginie, the woman in the portrait, as one would assume from the beginning of the book? Or is it an account of John Singer Sargent's career, as told in the second half of the book? Neither story-line seems to take hold. No doubt that Sargent was extremely talented and now I do know the story behind the portrait as well as a picture of how Americans and artists lived in France during that period in history. But nearly all the characters in the book were shallow and uninteresting. I rushed through the book, wishing for it to end.