The Summer I Met Jack

The Summer I Met Jack by Michelle Gable   528 pages

I started following author Michelle Gable’s career when “A Paris Apartment” first came out in 2015.  If you haven’t read, I highly, highly recommend it. The next two novels were good, but not great…it was hard to follow her mesmerizing debut. But now, Gable has returned to a novel that I simply couldn’t put down. Thankfully, for hubby, I saved it for a road trip. The miles flew by as I immersed myself in this a little known story.

This time around, Gable takes on that still-golden family, the Kennedy’s. After reading more than 200 books to get to the truth about the family of Joe, Sr. and his wife, Rose, Gable is able to create a realistic view of the family that we still want to be flawless, no matter how many faults come to life.

Actually, “The Summer I Met Jack” is less about JFK than it is about Alicia Corning Clark, who seems to be, at least in this story, Jack’s first true love.

Alicia escaped Nazi Germany, ending up in Hyannis Port, working in a movie theater as a concessioner. A friend of her who is a maid at the Kennedy compound gets her on as a maid. Alicia is dazzled by the young Massachusetts congressman. Joe Sr. doesn’t seem to mind the pair as a couple until Jack wants to marry her. Marrying a displaced person, immigrant, Jewish girl will stop Jack’s political career dead in its tracks. Joe forces the couple apart.

Brokenhearted, Alicia departs for Hollywood, where she has affairs with actors (like Gary Cooper), princes, athletes, and becomes close friends with Katherine Hepburn. All the while, no matter the city or country she is in, Jack weaves in and out of her life. While she marries several more times, it is Jack who truly holds her heart. The last time they meet is on the eve of Jack’s presidential inauguration.

When Alicia discovers she is pregnant, she flees to Rome, a hotspot for the socialite set. Could the baby be JFK’s?  Alicia seems to sleep around almost as Jack does. That’s the major question behind this novel.

One of the things that I really liked (and saved me hours of Googling the info) was that a small pamphlet was included in the book that laid out the fact from the fiction.  I loved this story and could not put it down.  “The Summer I Met Jack” receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

The Swans of Fifth Avenue

The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin              Audio Book: 13 hours     Paperback Book:  400 pages                       

I absolutely loved this book!   What a great piece of writing.   As a rule I prefer non-fiction to fiction but I would read this book again and again it was so well written and such great detail and character definition.   True, the characters are all real and the details could easily have been researched but Melanie Benjamin’s fine hand at writing and bringing all of these people back to life and sharing such touching particulars about each both endear them and even the coarse or low sides of them are brought to light in such a way as to elicit empathy for every act whether vile or compassionate.  Oh I do so love this story.   Full of juicy dish on Hollywood celebrities and genteel descriptions down to the woodwork in the Plaza in New York.     Ms. Benjamim delivers a stellar story brilliantly.    I could gush over this one for days but then I would begin to sound like one of the story’s main characters, Truman Capote.     Do read this, you will be glad you did.    A laser look into the life of the wealthy that shows that money does not heal all wounds nor can it fix everything.   It can only pay for the polish to hide what is lurking beneath.     Bravo, Melanie Benjamin!   I give you a standing ovation for the world you brought to the page in such a way it is not just a read but a lush experience.   Thank you for that.                  

A Fine Imitation

A Fine Imitation by Amber Bock    304 pages

One of the first things that captured my attention for A Fine Imitation is the cover. Whoever said you can’t judge a book by its cover was only half-wrong. The cover model invokes the novel’s main protagonist, Vera Longacre Bellington: glamorous, chic, period, and lonely.

Deep down, Vera has always been lonely. During her college years at Vassar College in 1913 and ten years later when she lives in New York City. I had the feeling that even as a child, an only child at that, that she was lonely. The novel alternates between 1913 and 1923.

Vera loves art and is studying it at Vassar. She befriends Bea Stillman from Atlanta. Bea is everything Vera is not. The two become fast friends as Bea pulls Vera into one adventure aft another. Only when the two get caught on one such adventure, Vera is pulled from the college (with only a semester until graduation) by her very formidable mother. Bea has secrets she is desperately trying to hide. Vera and Bea glimpse each other occasionally, but never speak or acknowledge each other’s presence.

Fast forward to 1923. Vera lives in the penthouse of the most luxurious apartment building in New York…and one that her husband, Arthur Bellington, built. Vera has everything money can buy: accept love. The couple is close with many of other wealthy couples living in the building.

I’m not sure really how it came to be, but the residents of the building decide they want a mural painted on the tiles in the basement’s Pool Room. A search is conducted, and soon Emil Hallern, a French painter, arrives. As an artist, he has several demands, like not allowing anyone in the room until the painting is complete.

Hallern never talks about himself, which leaves Vera suspicious. The harder she pushes the less he will disclose. Soon, the two are embroiled in a passionate affair, where secrets are revealed, secrets I never saw coming.

Bock’s debut novel, on the surface, reminds me of Melanie Benjamin’s latest title, The Swans of Fifth Avenue. It appears to be almost about nothing…about everyday life among the wealthy, but readers will find themselves knee-deep in human interactions and all that those involve. The title evokes the two parallel stories that run throughout the novel.

I received A Fine Imitation from Blogging for Books in exchange for this review.

I give A Fine Imitation 5 out of 5 stars.

The Swans of Fifth Avenue

 

The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin    368 pages

I read Melanie Benjamin’s prior novel, The Aviator’s Wife, and just LOVED it. I felt like I was on the wall of the Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh home. I admit that I haven’t yet picked up her two previous novels, but they are on my TBR list. I was excited that Benjamin was finally coming out with a new novel.

This time she turns her pen on “New York’s ‘Swans’ of the 1950s—and the scandalous, headline-making, and enthralling friendship between literary legend Truman Capote and peerless socialite Babe Paley.” The ‘Swans’ are Babe’s friends: Slim Keith, C Z Guest, Gloria Guiness, and Pamela Churchill (yes a relation to Winston).

These women are five of New York’s most beautiful and wealthiest women. They have it all: high profile husbands, money, clothes, beauty, glamor, influential friends, jewels, and gorgeous homes. Babe’s drop-dead gorgeous face often appeared on cover of style magazines, mainly Vogue. But inside was a desperately lonely woman who only wanted to be loved.

Enter Truman Capote. He explodes onto the New York scene and is quickly taken under Babe’s wing. They form a tight, chaste relationship, in which each one depends on the other for emotional support.

When I first picked up Swans, I had to read to page 159 and gave up. There was, I thought, no real plot. Nothing happened and the same conversations happened over and over. I was bitterly disappointed.  I thought about my disillusionment often; then it hit me. That’s basically what these people were about---nothing. The only one who seemed to contribute to society was Capote.

So I picked Swans up again, started on page 150, and was soon immersed in their world. It was sad to watch Capote binge on drugs and booze and Babe succumb to cancer, but death was really the only way out of the lives they had created.

I give The Swans of Fifth Avenue 5 out of 5 stars.