Savage Grace

This was the most absurdly written book I ever read. I couldn't even get interested in reading the book because of all the bold sub headers of recognitions. It made the book seem as a book of rumors. It did not flow and was all over the place. I never made it past page eight. Felt like when authors said they were writing a book people said you can quote me but give me a section under my name. And that's exactly what they did. Still do not know the full story.

Savage Grace is a riveting, oral history of the Baekland dynasty that started with so much promise, and ended with a tragedy. It begins in the 1970s with the murder of Barbara Baekeland by her son, Anthony Baekeland. It then delves into the history of Bakelite (a plastic)which was invented by the GreatGRandfather of the family Leo Hendrik Baekeland in the early 20th century. This invention made the family very wealthy (and was also used in the atomic bomb, I had no idea of this until I read the book). The book discusses Brook Baekeland, Leo Baekeland's Grandson in detail and his excessive spending and aimlessness. He marries Barbara Daly, and the marriage is a disaster. Barbara Daly-Baekeland has a personality disorder and is a spendthrift social climber. She smothers her son, Anthony, a gentle soul who is eventually diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and does not accept his homosexuality (to the extent that it is commented on by several people interviewed that Anthony reported sleeping with her). The FAther Brooks BAekeland does not accept his son's personality so he neglects his son. It discusses the decadence and decline of this family, which culminates in the murder of Barbara Baekeland by Anthony. I originally read this book when I was in high school and did not finish it due to not understanding the oral narrative style the authors chose to use. I recently picked this book up and finished it due to the movie on HBO that was released last year. It was beyond my comprehension in high school, but now that I am older I appreciate it. This book has everything someone interested in true crime would like. Incest, murder, untreated mental illness, scandal, social climbing, celebrities, and american and european nobilty appear in abundance in this sad tale. This book is up there with the other true crime greats Helter Skelter, and Fatal Vision. It is a classic that is well worth your time.

An appropriate title for this book. Very interesting indeed--made even more so by the fact that this is true. This is a nightmarish tale of a "Mama's Boy". This story has everything. Insanity, murder, obscession, betrayal, jealousy, wealth, homosexuality, even incest. With parents like these, no wonder Antony Baekeland snapped. I enjoyed it thoroughly, even though it is not written in a traditional way. Taken from slices of interviews, journals, and documents, this book is a great read. Very interesting, however it is not for everyone. If strange family relations are not for you, stay away. If you are of the stereotype that incest only happens in the south (which is untrue anyway), and not to wealthy, "normal" jet-setting families, this is not to you.

I first read this book when it originally came out. I was in high school and like many teenagers I was prepared to see parents as the source of most teenage troubles. After reading this book, I promptly wrote my parents a nice letter about what swell people they were. I was that grateful not to have had Brooks and Barbara Baekeland for parents. This is the rare book that proved even better than I remembered when I reread it last month. It starts with the murder of Barbara Baekeland by her son then goes back in time to beginnings of the Baekeland fortune through the passionate but ill-fated marriage of Brooks and Barbara until it catches up with the murder and the sad denouement of Tony's life. As one reviewer here has noted, this is not a traditional narrative but an oral history. The transcripts of interviews are presented without comment - very much like Jean Stein's great Edie and Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil - and the speakers reveal far more about themselves than any narrative could. If there is a villain in this story, for me it wasn't Tony Baekeland, who clearly suffered from serious mental illness but his father Brooks Baekeland. Rarely have I come across a character in fiction or nonfiction who made me want to slap him so hard or so often. Early on one former friend of the Baekelands' talks about wanting to kill Brooks in the street with a brick. By the end of the book you may, like me, find this to be a perfectly reasonable response because Brooks is a piece of work. In fact, he's a complete jerk. If I'd been Tony's lawyer I'd have used the fact that Tony had the opportunity to kill his father yet didn't as Exhibit A in the fact that Tony was insane. Whether he's yammering on about how much he was like his brilliant grandfather, complaining about the fact that Tony couldn't stick with anything (this from a writer who only managed to write one short story and didn't finish his PhD!) or basically abandoning Tony after he's released from Broadmoor, Brooks Baekeland is a loathsome individual. His blatant homophobia and sheer lack of compassion will take your breath away. Other characters come across as clueless or careless but Brooks is downright diabolical in his self-absorption. As an evocation of a time, a certain type of ultra-privileged couple (the sort with artistic pretensions but little talent or commitment) and a mind boggling selfishness, Savage Grace is a book to read and reread. It's suited for True Crime and biography fans. As noted, if you don't like oral histories you probably won't like it - there is very little narrative holding the interviews together. When the author wants to describe Riker's Island, she presents her description as an interview, for example. If you enjoy hearing the story from the mouths of those who lived it, Savage Grace is a book you won't soon forget.

An industrious European peasant immigrates to America at the end of the 19th century, invents plastic, becomes a gazillionaire and leaves his heirs a terrible lot of money. A couple of generations later, the fortune begets Brooks Baekeland, a wannabe-genius writer/adventurer/snob, who "marries down" when he makes middle-class Barbara Daly his wife. Barbara's extraordinary beauty is her ticket into the exclusive terrarium of the super-rich. She embraces social and talent-climbing like a religion and, together with Brooks, lives a loud, indulgent, hedonistic life without parameters. Their tempestuous marriage produces one child, Tony, who grows up to eclipse his father in terms of raw talent and then, later, to stab his mother to death with a kitchen knife in a London flat. Theme-wise, this book has everything - trashy money, smothering mothers, hyper-competitive fathers and sons, closeted homosexuality, sexual thrill-seeking, jet-setting, incest, murder and madness - it's Dominick Dunne meets Oresteia. It's the greatest book you'll ever take to the beach. It's the book that keeps you up all night. It's one of the most scandalous, salacious stories ever told - and it's all true. But the real accomplishment of the book is the format. In lieu of the straightforward black and white factual narration of most true crime books, Steven M. L. Aronson and Natalie Robins collected and artfully collated the remembered vignettes, fragmented glimpses, personal impressions, and eyewitness testimonies of family members, friends, acquaintances and survivors of the Baekeland's dark world. It's a looser but more compelling design that lets the colorful, lively voices of Baekeland contemporaries tell the story all the way to the terrifying, hair-raising, murderous destination. The denouement is at once shocking and perfectly ironic. Two decades after Savage Grace was first published, I am still turning friends on to it and still getting breathless, gushing phone calls about it. Can't wait for the movie.

Wealthy American family on a path to nowhere, traveling around the world running from themselves. Who could blame them, really? They were all terrible people deep down. Too much time, too much money. A smothering mother, flighty uncaring father and a dangerous schizophrenic son. Perfect combination for murder. A terrific read. Hard to put down.