Marie C

Bayard's "memoir"had its moments:sentences that were great writing, glimpses into the Kennedy life that felt like a well-directed film, and characterizations that rendered the famous pair as true-to-life as the fan magazines made them for decades before and after his death. But some of what I saw and imagined was gratuitous, making the narrator and his thinking more important than the characters he was attempting to bring to life in a nuanced manner. I was disappointed. As a Jackie O fan, I felt cheated of reality. I felt the sometimes snide judgments of the narrator as unnecessary. And, although well written, the book sometimes read like a Kitty Kelly tell all, where the narrator is more impressed by his own cleverness and access to the the "stars" than he is at peeling away the character's depth. Some of the observations even came across as sophomoric, looking to gossipy asides for accurate portrayal. It is an alternative portrayal for sure, but not one that engaged me.

Because I love historical fiction this book was a treasure of WWI horrors. At times, I felt the detail went over the top and the scenes with rats almost impossible to read, but there are those who would find these appealing. I like the multiple interwoven tales of people whose lives were disrupted and broken by a war that really had no winner because it wiped put a whole generation. However, the switching from time to time was jarring, and I kept looking back to see where/when I had been and get a sense of how this fit in to where I was headed. The story is moving and worth the time needed to decipher the mysteries, but it is not light reading, not the usual mystery, and sometimes full of too much detail. Nevertheless, from a historical perspective, it is worth the effort.