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The Astor Orphan LP: A Memoir (2013)

by Alexandra Aldrich(Favorite Author)

2.68 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0062223399 (ISBN13: 9780062223395)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

HarperLuxe

review 1: This was such a disappointing book. A series of moany chapters about her early life which so needed filling out with more detail and a sense of an over arching narrative. Don't tell us! Show us! I feel for Aldrich's chilly neglected child hood but the book just didn't feel finished. And it can't have all been bad. It must have been summer sometimes. And I would have liked bigger portraits of the people who her father picked up, who seemed interesting in their awfulness.
review 2: The Astor Orphan reminded me of Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons. Both works explore how prominent, dynastic American families will slowly decline when the subsequent generations fail to nourish the family coffers, indeed, in both cases suck the wealth dry. Alexandra A... moreldrich, a direct descendent of the famous Astor clan, lives at Rokeby, the crumbling family mansion located on 450 acres of Hudson Valley real estate. Her family is the sort of "poor relation" branch of the family. Her Harvard educated father chooses to act as Rokeby's unpaid handyman. Aldrich and her family live in squalor in Rokeby's attic. The description of Rokeby's disrepair is appalling - mold, water damage, collapsing ceilings, wall-paper hanging from walls, mouse droppings everywhere, hardwood floors ruined - the list goes on and on. Alexandra Aldrich's grandmother is her only frail link to normalcy. Aldrich repeatedly states that all she longs for is a clean, warm home, regular decent meals, and normal parents - in short, a conventional family life. However, that isn't going to happen at Rokeby with its revolving door of bohemian tenants, hangers-on, "artists" - so, Alexandra finds a way to leave her dysfunctional family and strike out on her own. Perhaps if the Astor clan had produced more Alexandra's, it wouldn't be the ruined shadow of its 19th century glory. less

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