November's Read :
Oscar Wilde famously wrote: ''children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.'' In an arresting new memoir, ''Them,'' Francine du Plessix Gray somehow manages to juggle all three sentiments at once. Her book paints a vivid, often harrowing portrait of her formidable mother and her equally formidable stepfather, and the remarkable trajectory of their lives, which took them from Revolutionary Russia to Vichy France to post-World War II New York. She unflinchingly recounts both the hardships they sustained in war-torn Europe and the selfishness they displayed in their relentless pursuit of social success in Manhattan. She chronicles their generosity and fickleness, their charm and perfidy and often appalling narcissism. And she charts the emotional costs that their glittering, seigniorial existence exacted from them -- and from their relatives and friends. |
She was Tatiana du Plessix, the former muse of the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky -- an imperious, larger-than-life woman who liked to claim direct descent from Genghis Khan and whose presence, her daughter writes, ''had the psychic impact of a can of Mace.'' She would come to preside over a soignée hat empire at Saks Fifth Avenue and become one of the smart set's most imperious arbiters.
Them: A Memoir of Parents - Francine Du Plessix Gray
