My First Cousin Once Removed: Money, Madness, and the Family of Robert Lowell

With fresh black humor and a no nonsense style, Sarah Payne Stuart has written a book of family suffering that gives a vivid understanding of the terrors and fall out of mental illness. She also describes with deft strokes what monsters people are, who lack imagination, and arrange to be insulated from pain by self-regard and a great deal of money.

Perhaps the most entertaining book that I have ever read. Sarah Payne Stuart makes me howl and a second later makes me thank God that I've got both oars in the water. God Bless You SPS.

This is a wonderful book -- delightfully well crafted and inspiring. It has less to do with Robert Lowell than the title and other reviews imply, but so what. The rest of the author's family is just as interesting if not more so. She deals in a flinty steadfast New England way with madness and eccentiricity and writes with wit and charm, leaping effortlessly from Plymouth Rock to the 1980's. She has the very rare gift of being ironic and insightful about herself and her growing up without degenerating into self-pity. An example from 1967: "Aunt Sarah talked of sending me to Miss Porter's [finishing school], just as she talked about the coming-out party she was going to given me in the garden in Manchester (but which I declined because of the bombing of Vietnam, a connection that was a bit clearer to me then)." If you enjoy crystal clear prose, history and getting to know some delightful characters, this one's for you.

Sarah Stuart has done a remarkable job of limning the WASP world of Robert Lowell's family - and her own. She is cheerfully honest, perceptive and quite amazingly intelligent. The picture she draws lingers with the reader long after the book has been put down. Her portrait of Lowell is refreshingly free from the amateur Freudian analysis so tiresomely characteristic of many memoirs.

"From a sometimes painful family history, Sarah Payne Stuart has created a poignant, funny and ultimately triumphant memoir filled with great warmth and wisdom. Written in a refreshing, unforgettable voice which never falters nor sentimentalizes, MY FIRST COUSIN ONCE REMOVED is a thoroughly terrific book." --Doris Keans Goodwin