Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy

I didn't know anything about CBK beyond post mortem tabloid snippets & the famous wedding dress. I'd seen a good looking 20-something JFK Jr roller blading & riding the bus around town, but never gave him much thought. This bio, drawn from significant research and interviews with multiple sources, presents CBK as a smart, vivacious, happy, savvy woman who had a strong career in the fashion business - rapidly rising at Calvin Klein which was no small feat - and many friends long before JFK Jr arrived in her life. Oddly, the book offers as much of a look at JFK Jr as it does CBK. His friends - many of whom considered CBK to be "non-prep school, non-Ivy" - saw her as a threat to their proximity to John & were the source of many of the vicious, cruel, lies that were spread about her. Really? Did they think he was never going to grow beyond the cool college guy into a 39 yr old whose wife would be more important to him than they were? The paparazzi hounded her until she became reclusive yet she was criticized for not working after marriage. She couldn't leave the apt because paps were positioned there 24/7. Her experience w/them is described as something close to trauma & her husband seemed to not understand it even though his mother was notable for getting a restraining order against 1 particular aggressive pap. CBK is pushed against an elevator by a mob of them & her husband does nothing. Much was made of her low dose antidepressants that washed up on a beach after the crash - sounds perfectly natural for someone to seek psych help after years of being hunted. It's not until p. 238 that one of John's friends is quoted as saying what I'd begun to think - why isn't he at least moving her to a building w/a doorman? hiring security? Why is a couple whose celebrity has become so enormous so quickly without professional management for business & social purposes? John's magazine was launched just as the internet starting the decline in paper magazines why not push re-set with business management? John seems completely out of touch w/reality when he claims that his mom raised her kids in NYC so why is CBK reluctant to get pregnant w/JFK III? He totally ignores that John's mother lived in the White House when he was a toddler and then married Onassis to raise her kids on a private island in Greece to get away from the publicity following his father's assassination. She wasn't pushing a stroller alone in the narrow streets of Tribeca! The author gives a balanced account of the marriage to the extent that any outsider could. They died before they'd been married 4 years so there were adjustments to be made & given that they were both Catholic wouldn't have taken divorce - if it was ever mentioned - lightly. It's a good and credible read.

I only partially understand the negative reviews of this book. It could use improving. The author does include her own conjecture too often (but she makes it clear when she's doing this - it's not like she's deliberately mixing fact with hidden fictions). There is also repetition among some of the points she makes. That said, I have no idea why some reviewers say there's "nothing new" in this book. I've read every book about Jackie, Jackie & JFK, Jackie & Lee, JFK Jr., and JFK Jr. and Carolyn published in the last 35-40 years. There's a whole lot of new information in this book. The author left no stone un-turned in tracking down those who knew Carolyn and were willing to talk about her. She's amassed input from all kinds of people that none of us have ever heard from before. Further, it's not the author's fault that a whole lot of the compliments people give Carolyn are similar (which can make the text seem repetitive). There were dozens of people who knew Carolyn and remember her with tremendous affection. They agree she was smart, hard working, highly intuitive about and compassionate towards the needs of others, generous, fun, and uniquely beautiful. When all kinds of people called up from her past are saying the same thing, I tend to believe it. The author does mention some of Carolyn's character weaknesses and failings - but she tries to explain them away, which is why some people think it's a book about "Saint Carolyn." That's a mistake on the author's part. Yet, having read a lot about Carolyn in the past 2.5 decades (much of which is suspect, and seems wildly unfair to her reputation), I can understand the author's desire to counteract what seem to be false narratives. Regarding the insights of the overall book, there are 7-8 things this author has tracked down regarding the very beginning and middle of Carolyn and JFK Jr.’s dating relationship that I have NEVER heard before (two in particular left my jaw on the ground). Carole Radziwill's book mentions they dated intensely for a bit, broke up (this book tells us why) then got together at a later point. This book gives way more insights. After parting ways (dramatically!) the first time, they got back together, sort-of, again (interspersed with him returning several times to Daryl Hannah) - then only several years after all that did they become exclusive. This book also has A LOT of interesting detail, also previously unrevealed, about her career at Calvin Klein (not to mention her childhood, teen, and college years). It also paints a likeable, and admirable, picture of Carolyn's mother, Ann. I'd like to thank the author for the hard work she put into this. No book is perfect, and she's certainly contributed to Carolyn's memory in what I think is a truthful, and sorely needed, way.

We are given a glimpse into her life, successes, fears, achievements, comedic side , empathy, and unique connection to people. We get a chance to know the real Carolyn. Not what the media has lead us to believe about her life. It is a tragic story of an individual who like Jackie Kennedy valued and treasured her privacy yet was hounded day after day. John could have done so much more to help her navigate being his wife. A very nice read.

When I first started reading this book I couldn't put it down, but as the chapters went on it seemed the author definitely had CBK on a pedestal. How many times do we read about her hairstyle, what fabulous Prada outfit she was wearing or the powerhouse she was at Calvin Klein? It just seemed shallow and repetitious. That was the pattern for the rest of the book. One would have a hard time having sympathy for the problems she had...being married to JFK Jr., the opulent lifestyle, exotic vacations and never having to worry about money or where your next meal was coming from. So she was "tortured" by the paparazzi and never left that huge apartment and needed anti-depressants...yes you have some compassion for that but in the grand scheme of things those are minor problems in the world. Why didn't she just put her best foot forward, give them a smile once in a while as she was this vivacious creature that could handle anything or anyone in life according to the author? By the time the book ended it was a disappointment and I didn't get a real sense of her "captivating" life. Her life was charmed by many accounts and it was tragic the way it ended. I can't imagine her mother's grief and how she is today.

Le foto all’interno non corrispondono al libro, ho chiesto il cambio, ma anche il secondo è difettoso

Yes this book comes with the wrong pictures (something about space) but the book itself is actually really good and informative. Defo worth a read!

Despite some reviewers protesting about the book being a bit too benevolent, all the previous accounts about Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, an extremely accomplished trailblazer woman were surrounded by sexist toxicity. It was about time some writer, in this case Eizabeth Beller is unrivaled, expounded another different side of this fashion icon, a young woman who had daddy issues and mood swings, she was a perfectionist and she could be stubborn, she became increasingly paranoid due to her harrassment by a voyeuristic press, but guess what? She was actually a nice woman who in the early 90s stumbled upon the beloved John Kennedy Jr and she fell in love with him (not the public persona, his real self). Beller summes it up best: "The assumptions were from the pictures that she was icy, that she was cold. What I quickly learned was that she was warm and effervescent. She was joyful and loved to laugh.” A splendid biography totally worth your time. Highly recommended.

This is the most boring biography I have ever read in my life. Nothing interesting about the woman, nothing new about the couple, just a tedious repetition about how beautiful and special she was. Not worth a penny!

Great book!