“The scandalous, headline-making, and enthralling friendship between literary legend Truman Capote and peerless socialite Babe Paley.” This is a fictional telling of the socialite “Swans” of the 1950s and early 1960s that focuses mainly on Barbara “Babe” Paley, and her friendship with Truman Capote; however it includes many other famous women such as Slim Keith, C. Z. Guest, Gloria Guinness, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Pamela Churchill. These are the fabulously wealthy ladies who lunch, dress to impress, marry often and love to gossip. The era was […]
“It was her style, that indefinable asset. It was said that the others had style but Babe was style.”
I realized about 4 hours into this book (I listened to the audio version — big mistake, since you can’t skim to reach the ending faster) that nothing was actually going to happen. I slogged on, since I’d already invested so much time, but I was right — this one goes nowhere. I also kept telling myself that I like Melanie Benjamin novels, but I turned out to be wrong there. Like The Aviator’s Wife and The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb, The Swans of Fifth Avenue was just dull. […]
To Marry a Hero
And following the feel-good goodness of Willowdean and Dumplin’, I read The Aviator’s Wife, and spent the whole book wanting to strangle the main character. Read on! “Marriage breeds its own special brand of loneliness, and it’s far more cruel. You miss more, because you’ve known more.” The Aviator’s Wife is Melanie Benjamin’s fictionalization of the life of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the wife of aviator Charles Lindbergh and the mother of the poor Lindbergh baby, who was kidnapped and murdered at 20 months old. I’m not sure […]
Mercy Lavinia “Vinnie” Bump
I read Benjamin’s Alice Have I Been a few years ago. In that one, she creates a novel around the young lady who supposedly inspired Alice in Wonderland. I didn’t really like it very much, but I’d heard that The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb was worth a shot, so I grabbed it when I saw it at Half Price Books. I’m glad I did — it was a good story with a fascinating cast. “That’s just it, don’t you see? I don’t want to be taken […]