The Secret Memoirs of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

by Ruth Francisco

Book Overview

Jackie Kennedy quite famously said, "I want to live my life, not record it." She remains elusive, her interior life hidden, her feelings and motivations secret. Yet who has not wondered what lay behind those sunglasses? Haven't we all wondered how Jackie felt about Jack's womanizing? How could she not have known? How did she tolerate it? How did her childhood passions and turbulent family life shape her choices? How did her love of fashion and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312363567
• ISBN13: 9780312363567
• Release Date: December 2006
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Outstanding historical fiction!! Powerful!

In the author's note at the end of "The Secret Memoirs of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: A Novel," Ruth Francisco states up front that this is definitely a work of fiction. Although most events which take place within these pages have a basis in historical fact, they have been "filtered through Ms. Francisco's imagination." She tells her readers she "approached Jackie's fictional persona as an actor approaches a new role...by writing in her character's voice and imagining her thoughts and feelings." Obviously, her goal was to portray a three dimensional woman. She succeeds brilliantly! Now, I am a confessed Jackie groupie - but a respectful one. Although I used to see her from time to time on the streets of NYC, I would never have approached her, especially knowing how important privacy was to this most private of women. I have admired Mrs. Kennedy since I was in 8th grade and so hoped that Senator John F. Kennedy and his Jackie would win the 1960 presidential election and become our first royal family. Yes, I was very young when Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy became First Lady of the United States...but I vividly remember watching her husband deliver his inspiring inaugural address on TV and later, that same evening, watching the news as photographers followed this glamorous young couple to document their victory for posterity as they made the rounds of Washington D.C.'s celebratory balls. This was a first - American royalty. And Jackie was a glorious young queen. She was just 31 years-old. I was a starry-eyed kid. In the intervening years, with all the tragedy that has befallen the Kennedy family, I mourned with them, truly mourned. I have read various bios of Jackie and Jack, of RFK, and Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., the patriarch - some scholarly, some lurid. We as a nation were so much more innocent back in the early 1960s. What did we know of JFK's illnesses ... his obsession with women, the painkillers and meds, the heartbreak experienced by the loving and capable young wife and mother who was also the very public First Lady of the United States? What did we know of the late blooming love that flowered between Jackie and her husband...alas...too late? Jacqueline Kennedy, the woman who brought culture, sophistication, elegance, savoir faire to the White House and the country, was always an icon to me - but never quite real. Many times I tried to align what I knew to be factual incidents from her life with the smiling, poised woman who graced the pages of newspapers, magazines and TV screens. Ruth Francisco, to my delight, has brought Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to life on the pages of "The Secret Memoirs." Fiction or not, I get a much more realistic feel for who she was as a person, a woman, not just what she represented. And I like and admire her more for knowing. The author writes that her intention in writing this book was not to violate Jackie's privacy - but "to get a sense of the woman behind the myth, the human behind the icon." I thank her

A Good Read

I think that this author did an excellent job in making her novel believable and interesting. It does contain some sordid details, but, then there WERE some sordid details in Jackie's life.

Riveting reading

Princess bride, queen, mother, widow - in this fictionalized memoir of Jackie O's life, Ruth Francisco does for Jackie what Joyce Carol Oates did for Marilyn - that is, capture the complex, passionate, intelligent woman behind the various archetypes she inhabited so fully throughout the stages of her life. Francisco delves into the not-so-glorious aspects of the life of an extremely private public figure, whom everyone "owned" and who no one really knew. I believed this was a real memoir from page 1. Loved this book, as I did Ruth Francisco's previous novels - I think she is a major literary talent in the making. Looking forward to her next book.

Riveting!

Ruth Francisco is a beautiful writer. In this novel she unveils for us the shy, brilliant, funny, and extremely courageous woman who was Jackie Onassis. From childhood on, the novel gives us a first hand account of a very difficult and poignant life. It is the first time I have felt the woman behind the icon, the flesh behind the stereotype. I loved with her, cried with her, and understood why she made her choices. Although I knew it was an imagined diary, I believe Ruth Francisco captured much of Jackie's soul and humanity. I was riveted from Page 1.

Behind The Veil

This book takes us behind the widow's black veil, behind the fashionable large sunglasses into the mind and heart of an American Icon. Jackie is no longer a distant figure. Ruth Francisco presents Jackie as a woman with real feelings: passion, grief, alienation, success and fear. We, the readers are voyeurs, in the life of a woman so familiar yet so mysterious. A must read for fans of Jackie, historical fiction, love and romance or woman's studies. With each Chapter we can conjure up in our minds the pictures of that particular time in Jackie's life that was also a part of American history from her early days as a schoolgirl to her final walk with Maurice in Central Park we get inside Jackie's mind and heart with a depth that will give you new appreciation for the suject and the author. Don't miss this one.