Several weeks ago, Lisa of
Books on The Brain, invited bloggers to read
Wendy Burden's memoir. Having been to the Cliff Walk in Newport, Rhode Island, and walked among the 'summer cottages' such as the Vanderbilt's
Breakers, I was curious about those who had once called these mausoleums home.
Wendy Burden, the great-great-great granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, writes her memoir with audacity. It is a no holds barred exposure to the life she led, as well as the lives of her family. Raised by a Pucci-clad mother, intent on the sea-and-ski tan year round, and grandparents who resided in New York's Fifth Avenue, we are able to catch a glimpse into their lives which in more ways than one reminded me of Augusten Burrough's memoir
Running With Scissors.
"Oh, don't be so bratty," my mother replied, blacking in her eyebrows with a red Maybelline pencil. "There are lots of little girls who'd give up growing tits for a chance to hang out on Fifth Avenue and be waited on my servants. Hand me my lipstick?" She passed the frosted tube across her mouth and smacked a Kleenex to set it. Faberge' Nude Pink was her lifelong color of choice, a pastel shade that brings to mind Sun Belt drag queens and leather-faced Junior Leaguers. She would die wearing it.
"Anyhoo," my mother said, giving a blast of Final Net to her French twist, "you know your grandparents have insisted on this visitation schedule ever since your father tuned up his toes. And so have their goddamn lawyers." She walked across the room and stood over me then, a tanned blond bombshell in a cocktail dress, fishnets, and stilettos, reeking of Diorissimo. When she leaned down, I was afraid she was going to kiss me or something, but instead she remarked with disbelief, "That can't be a pimple on your chin already!" p. 12
With this intense bravado, Wendy had me entirely enchanted until about page 158. Like watching AMC's
Mad Men, I was flooded with memories of growing up in the sixties. Small things, like the metal ice trays with the handles which you pulled up to release the cubes, Tab with its hourglass bottle in the shape our mothers aspired to, popular forbidden-to-little-girls novels of the times like
Valley of The Dolls reminded me of my own childhood.
But, I never experienced the daredevil whims in which Wendy regularly indulged: collecting dead seagulls and studying their varying degrees of decomposition, building a guillotine with which to behead her Barbies, threatening to cook the family hamster just to scare away her mother's suitor.
A little more than halfway through the novel, I tired of the antics. I tired of the tone. I wondered what Wendy may have been feeling deep down as she was raised in a family with a vain and largely absent mother, a father dead by suicide, grandparents wealthy beyond imagining who seemed to honor sons more than daughters.
The question I submitted for the discussion to be held live with Wendy on May 18th at 5 pm PST is this: "Is your irreverant, and often hilarious sense of humour, a way of covering up any pain you experienced in your unconventional upbringing?"
I wonder what she'll say.
