A roman a clef about Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, and it did not disappoint. Michael Korda really has a gift, because Curtain reads like a good novel and feels like trash. The characters are oddly sympathetic, though I got really distracted trying to figure out who was who in Hollywood and British theatre circles, and it's obvious that the author actually knew something about these worlds. Contrast the scenes showing Robby/Olivier's obsession with makeup with, say, a book or four full of made-up shit about vampires, and it will strike you - ANYTHING can be written well. Sort of like how Fred Astaire said in his autobiography that there's even an artistic way to lift a garbage can. Curtain is sort of the literary equivalent of that