Them: A Memoir of Parents

This is a book of many parts. A daughter's memoir of extraordinary parents it is, which was what I expected. And indeed that is the organizing thread. But it also offers delicious insights into the Conde Nast publishing empire. It's about fleeing France in 1940 - about fleeing the Russian revolution in 1920 - about the emigre experience - about arrogance, pride, generousity,selfishness and monumental ego. It's about Paris between the wars and America during and after WWII. A story beautifully written, lovingly told - and I honestly couldn't put it down.

A great read and very engrossing story. Francine du Plessix Gray has a way of conveying her family's history and her experiences in childhood and adulthood without ever sounding bitter or resentful.

I saw the author at Barnes & Noble earlier this year, and knowing nothing about her as a writer, I dismissed her book as one more self-involved memoir. Was I ever proven delightfully wrong! Her parents' story is so beautifully told, in sentences so artfully crafted as to create an esthetic experience of the highest level. You feel she has carefully adjusted every nuance, every word, and placed each sentence for maximum effect. In fact, I wonder if her gift for exquisite language is not akin to her mother's for the perfect placement of decoration on her hat designs. There is a similar obsession with the telling detail, a similar esthetic sensibility. I loved this story, it moved slowly but it was ultimately so satisfying. There are really several, four or five, stories -- the colorful Russian relatives, the family's escape from France and early years in New York, the author's upbringing as a neglected child of privilege, the later years of Tatiana's decline and Alex's marriage to a Philippine nurse (read: interloper) and his alienation from Francine and her children. There is so much sheer story telling skill here, told with artistic virtuosity. Francine du Plessix Gray has entirely won me over, and I thoroughly appreciate her as a writer and as a woman of depth and generosity. Most of all, this memoir is indeed one "of parents", not of herself, and that she keeps herself fairly in the background is one of the foremost accomplishments of this luminous memoir.

Francine du Plessix Gray who, has written several fine novels as well as complex and satisfying biographies of the Marquis de Sade and Simone Weil, now tenderly explores the lives of her famously mercurial parents. "Them" is a success any way you look at it; the elegant writing and the loving way she examines the life she had with these completely self-absorbed people make this memoir worth reading. Her parents were Tatiana Yakoleva, a renowned New York designer of hats, and Alex Liberman, who was one of the creators of modern fashion journalism at Vogue. The du Plessix in Francine's name comes from her birth father, a hero of the French Resistance who died early in World War II. Although he never adopted her, Alex Liberman was the father she knew and loved, the man she and her mother always saw as the one who rescued them from the horrors of war. Tatiana had already fled one revolution, leaving Russia to live in Paris as a teenager with her grandmother, aunt, and uncle. In her early 20s, she met the dynamic Russian revolutionary poet and playwright Vladimir Mayakovsky during one of his visits to France. He wrote one of his most beautiful poems to her and begged her to return to Russia with him. But her fear was too great, and she married diplomat Bertrand du Plessix before Mayakovsky could return to again persuade her. Mayakovsky had been under growing scrutiny for his criticism of increasing oppression in the new Soviet Union, and he committed suicide shortly thereafter. His letters were one of the Tatiana's most carefully guarded items when she fled Europe. Photos from the family's arrival in New York make them look like a tight-knit trio, but Tatiana and Alex were terrible parents. They shuttled off Froshka, as they called her, with all sorts of extraneous family and friends. A friend had to tell her that her father was dead. They failed to tell her when they got married. They were as ambitious and thoughtless as two people can be. But they loved her very much. What makes this memoirs so remarkable is how warmly du Plessix Gray writes about all this. She does not see herself as a victim, which is probably why she has a close and healthy family life as an adult. Beautiful writing, fearlessness, and compassion make this a memoir that will hold readers captive from start to finish.

"Them" is an engrossing read. Mrs. Gray portrays her parents in their full roundedness with no holds barred when it comes to revealing their faults as well as their virtues. In reading the memoir, I found myself saying "what fascinating people yet how obnoxious. . . how powerful an emotion love is to permit a daughter to see all her parents' faults and still treat them with respect." The book is also a portrait of a time and an industry (magazine publishing) and of people finely attuned to the needs of fashionable society. It's also about Change and how we all become outmoded when our work fails to meet changing fashions.