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Published Mar 2011
304 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
The Love Story of JFK Jr. and Christina Haag. An elegy to first love, a lost New York, and a young man who led his life with surprising and abundant grace.
When Christina Haag was growing up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, John F. Kennedy, Jr., was just one of the boys in her circle of prep school friends, a skinny kid who lived with his mother and sister on Fifth Avenue and who happened to have a Secret Service detail following him at a discreet distance at all times. A decade later, after they had both graduated from Brown University and were living in New York City, Christina and John were cast in an off-Broadway play together. It was then that John confessed his long-standing crush on her, and they embarked on a five-year love affair. Glamorous and often in the public eye, but also passionate and deeply intimate, their relationship was transformative for both of them. With exquisite prose, Haag paints a portrait of a young man with an enormous capacity for love, and an adventurous spirit that drove him to live life to its fullest.
A haunting book, Come to the Edge is a lasting evocation of a time and a place - of the indelible sting of the loss of young love, and of the people who shape you and remain with you, whether in person or in spirit. It is about being young and full of hope, with all the potential of your life as yet unfulfilled, and of coming of age at a moment in New York’s history when the city at once held danger, magic, and endless possibilities for self-discovery.
Rarely has a love story been told so beautifully.
"Stifling pathos and loss overshadow this heartfelt memoir...What remains is a piercing portrait of a vibrant, reckless, tender young man so bursting with life that nothing could contain him." - Publishers Weekly
"Despite her intimate view, Haag is careful not to exploit the Kennedy clan; instead, she simply returns them to human form. An honest, heartfelt account of love, politics and tragedy." - Kirkus Reviews
"Come to the Edge perfectly captures what it feels like to be young and in love - the giddiness, the lunacy, the madcap swings between exhilaration and despair…Haag is a beautiful writer, and the book [is] full of wonderfully vivid descriptions." - Entertainment Weekly
"We know how the story ends, of course. Girl loses boy. Boy loses everything. But in this finely-drawn, indelible portrait of a friendship and love affair, Christina Haag illuminates the private world of one of our nation’s most legendary families. Come to the Edge should be read not only for its fascinating insider’s view, but because it’s a brave, human, beautiful, wrenching memoir." -Dani Shapiro, author of Devotion
"With unfailing grace, sensitivity, and tact, Christina Haag recreates in poignant detail her prolonged romance with John F. Kennedy Jr., who struggled to fathom the meaning of his life. The author never stoops to tabloid sensationalism or cheapens this rare glimpse into America’s royal family. However charming the hero or scenic the backdrop, the memoir is tinged with the tragic darkness that inevitably shadowed the Kennedy clan, with death and danger forever lurking just beyond camera range. Jackie Kennedy Onassis floats through the narrative as an enchanting presence who is appealing in her wisdom and bounty. This is a beautiful and, in the end, unutterably sad book about fleeting innocence, blighted hope, and the elusive nature of youthful love." - Ron Chernow, author of Washington: A Life
This information about Come to the Edge was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Christina Haag is an actress who lives in New York and Los Angeles. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Juilliard School.
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