Very Much a Lady: The Untold Story of Jean Harris and Dr. Herman Tarnower

This is a good book. I have read several books on Jean Harris and I have to say this is the best. If you have an interest in this story this is the book to read.

I didn't come to this book "cold." I have seen interviews with and documentary TV programs about Mrs. Harris, read another book about her, and viewed both HBO's "Mrs. Harris" and an earlier, excellent TV movie about her trial which utilized trial transcripts for the dialogue. Shana Alexander's detailed, nuanced book about the life of the woman whom she quickly came to admire and sympathize with gets my vote, however, for how Mrs. Harris should be remembered. Being mesmerized by need and wonderful memories into continuing in an increasingly unrewarding, even degrading, relationship is a phenomenon which both men and women, uneducated or as impressively literate as Jean Harris, can understand. Things can go terribly wrong, particularly when one partner in the relationship seemingly is incapable of true commitment or even of empathy (Dr. T), and the other is under the spell of not only of lost love remembered but of sudden forced withdrawal from mood-altering, inappropriately prescribed medication. Ms. Alexander's book gives a fascinating, multi-faceted look at an uber-capable, extremely responsible adult female who goes through the windshield one appropriately dark and stormy night after long-term endurance of disrespect, flagrant cheating, and neglect and short-term drug-induced crashing depression and panic. Before being released from prison, Jean Harris spent years helping her fellow inmates and their children and writing lucid, compassionate books about this experience; much to her credit, her excellent biographer includes this information in this book. I hope Mrs. Harris, whenever she passes away, lives through the admiration and love of her own children, whom she cared for more than herself, as well as that of a wider audience introduced to her in this work. As for Dr. Tarnower, I hope he is remembered as what Mrs. Harris feared he would be: a "diet Doc."

Shana Alexander's Very Much a Lady and Diana Trilling's Mrs. Harris: The Death of the Scarsdale Diet Doctor are complementary books about a fascinating case: the murder of Dr. Tarnower by his lover Jean Harris.It is Jean Harris' motive in killing Dr. Tarnower that interests these two writers. Jean Harris was neither psychotic nor particularly violent. In some ways, she seemed the classic example of the woman wronged. In other ways, she seemed the classic example of the 1950s woman coping uneasily and unsuccessfully in the changed world of the 1980s and in still other ways, she seemed the eternal victim of circumstance. Both writers agree that the punishment did not fit the crime. Mrs. Harris did not intend to kill Dr. Tarnower and in law, intent does matter. Shana Alexander spends more time than Diana Trilling in exploring the mistakes made by the defense (such as their refusal to plead to a lesser charge), and she is more critical of the prosecution. Both writers, however, are primarily interested in Jean Harris' character. Their differing approaches regarding the latter are at the heart of these similar, yet ultimately distinct, books. Shana Alexander is an objective partisan. She is honest about Jean Harris' flaws, but it is clear both from her tone and the accumulation of biographical information that she considers Jean Harris not as a victim but as a basically sane and not unlikable human being pushed beyond her limits by her culture, her background, her medical history and her own psychology. She doesn't exculpate Jean Harris but neither does she condemn her. Diana Trilling, on the other hand, is far less partisan and far more critical. She sees in Jean Harris a woman who sacrificed her intellectual integrity for a sordid affair. She is disgusted by Mrs. Harris' behavior during the trial and appalled by the letter written by Mrs. Harris to Dr Tarnower before the killing (and never actually read by him). Shana Alexander, on the other hand, while agreeing that the letter condemned Mrs. Harris in the eyes of the jury (even in the evidence did not) bemoans the lack of prescience by Jean Harris' defense in presenting the letter in court. Her defense, Shana Alexander argues, did not understand Jean Harris and were therefore unable to successfully present the problems of the case both to Jean Harris herself and to the jury. The similarities and differences between Shana Alexander and Diana Trilling make their two books excellent complements. I recommend reading Diana Trillling's book first since it is the "outsider's" take on the case. Shana Alexander's book then will give the reader a closer look at a troubled woman and a bizarre, perhaps avoidable, tragedy.

Very Much a Lady by Shana Alexander is the immensely readable story of Jean Harris. For anyone who has lost track of yesterday's headlines, Harris is the headmistress of a girls' school who shot and killed her lover, Herman Tarnower, a respected cardiologist who authored the best-selling Complete Scarsdale Diet Book. To this day, Harris maintains that the fatal shooting of Dr. Tarnower was an accident that occurred when the doctor fought with her over the gun she planned to use to kill herself. Alexander traces of the lives of Harris and Tarnower from childhood on and sees the seeds of destruction planted early on. The same character traits which brought them together as lovers doomed them to a terrible ending. Harris's relationship with her impossible-to-please father formed her early identity as a "good girl" and led to her need for a dominant male image to shore up her shaky sense of self. The classic overachiever, Harris had to excel in any project! she tackled. She craved stimulation which she failed to get from her brief first marriage to a decent but unexciting man. Harris divorced him and began a fourteen-year-long love affair with Dr. Tarnower. The latter was a dedicated physician with old-fashioned attitudes toward women. There is one puzzling aspect to the tale that deserves fuller attention than Alexander gives it: Harris's religious background. According to Alexander, Jean Harris's Mom was a devout Christian Scientist. The irony of Jean's passion for a doctor should have been examined in light of the Christian Science beliefs into which she had been indoctrinated during her childhood--but this is ignored by Alexander. The jury rejected Harris's version of events and found her guilty of murder. Alexander, who is unabashadly Harris's partisan, brilliantly dissects the defense errors which led to conviction. Amongst the chief of these were her attorney's misguided interpretation of the explosive Scarsdale ! Letter, the distance between the accused and the jury in cl! a** and background, and the failure of her attorney to understand the personality of this brittle, high-strung "lady." In a story laced with ironies, the greatest is that in the version of events told by the prosecutor and accepted by the jury, Herman Tarnower is just another murder victim whereas according to Harris's defense Tarnower died a heroic death, tragically jeopardizing his life to save hers,