My Three Fathers: And the Elegant Deceptions of My Mother, Susan Mary Alsop

Let me first say that I read 99% nonfiction and I love biographies and autobiographies. From the description and reviews this book sounded fascinating and I looked forward to reading it, since I've been reading lately about this time period. I found it impossible to finish this book and finally gave up halfway through. It skips around too much, there are too many names to keep track of, and rather than being about Patten's family it was more of a history book.

Born to a life of privilege? If you were packed off to boarding schools while your mother sported around Europe with her cronies from the diplomatic corps in London and Paris you might not agree. I felt very sorry for the author but he doesn't come across as resentful for the way he was treated, rather he was in awe of his mother Susan Mary Patten (nee' Jay). I bought the book to learn more about her and the circle of aristocrats with whom she was associated both here in the Eastern Establishment of Bar Harbor and those on "the Continent". Some people may consider her a "bad girl", having young Patten out of wedlock but I can't help admiring her for devoting her life to surrounding herself with powerful men. I never had the impression of her having any maternal instincts; her pregnancy may have been an unfortunate mistake. Such drive, such passion isn't often exhibited except perhaps for lust. Susan Mary wasn't lustful; she could take it or leave it. She was beautiful and elegant even in her later years. She must have been a dress designer's delight, everything she put on flattered the dress but relative to the author, she was just plain cold. Read the book; he loved her but suffered for the lack of her love as he grew into manhood. Though, after reading this, you may want to be a diplomat. Do we still have those?

This book is a fascinating look at the world's elite and the very small circle they traveled in during the mid 20th century. The prose is excellent and the story compelling. I heartily recommend it as a great read.

read the same book I did. I thought Bill Patten did a wonderful job in bringing his interesting family to life by concentrating on his three "fathers". His "real" father, Duff Cooper, his "assumed" father, Bill Patten, and his "step" father, Joe Alsop. All three men were members of the WASP aristocracy, either in the US or in England, and all played important roles in both the US government or the British government in the first fifty or so years of the 20th Century. But between all these men was one woman, Susan Mary, herself a product of the same background as the men, who married two of them and bore a child - Bill the author - to the third. Susan Mary, a seemingly cold woman, certainly nicer to her friends than her children, a rather calculating woman, more at home in London and Paris society than with her children. Maybe the coldness came from having lost a beloved older sister when she was a child. Whatever caused it, the reticence and distance she imposed on her older child was partially to blame for what seems like a life-time "search" for identity by her son. Patten writes well and the reader can tell that he certainly seems to have gotten his life together. Maybe it took his mother's death in 2004 to put the pieces together.