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

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.

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.

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!