Deciding not to accept the Prix de Paris that she had won from Vogue Magazine, Jacqueline Bouvier decided to work instead as a journalist/photographer at a local newspaper. Jackie was a voracious reader, who liked to walk alone observing interesting sites and people. Her new job, interviewing personalities, was much more to her liking, especially when she interviewed the freshman senator from Massachusetts, Jack Kennedy. She knew him socially and found him very intriguing but they didn't click until after the interview. She saw him as different from the regular men she dated, and he saw her as a great wife for a politician.
They married and her regal beauty and style helped him win the presidency. Her life as first lady was difficult-she didn't really have a job, she was always in the public eye, she had to raise her children in a fishbowl, and her husband strayed (a lot.) But she coped with it all, helped by frequent trips to visit her sister Lee, where she met the rich Greek, Aristotle Onassis. After dealing gracefully with her husband's assasination, she realized that she and her children would have no peace unless she "disappeared" and that factored into her decision to marry Onassis. They basically had a long distance marriage which afforded Jackie the privacy that she craved. After his death, she reevaluated her own life and decided to go to work as a book editor, where she achieved great success-reading and editing were her passions. The book closes with her illness and end of life.
This is a novelization of the life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and the author has certainly done her homework, gathering material for her book, and writing an extensive bibliography at the end. The story of Jack and Jackie is one of evanescence, it was there for a beautiful moment and was gone suddenly. But Jackie spent the whole rest of her life influenced by their relationship and coming to grips with it. Most of the novel is written in the first person as we see all of the events through Jackie's eyes. However, we also get Jack's view of things-especially his frustration from his physical limitations and his relative inexperience.
I felt that the book was a fascinating window into the life of a famous woman who could hide her true self behind a mask for the public. Since I grew up in the sixties, this was very relevant to my child's view of the events in the book, but it would be a very good history lesson to younger women. Highly recommended.
Reviewed by Donna Ballard
Publication date - June 18, 2024
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