Customer Reviews

1185 Park Avenue: A Memoir

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is Anne Roiphe`s memoir of growing up in the 40's and 50's in a wealthy, squalid family.Roiphe has mined this territory in earlier books. Again she offers personal and political gossip (social history, if you will) against a background of local and world history. But here there is more: a cry from the heart. Father is savage and physically absent. Mother is self centered and incompetent. Treachery and betrayal abound. Attended by an army of maids, governesses, nurses, doctors, and psychoanalysts, she, her younger Brother and the others survive for a while but at a price. In the end, only she remains. This is a ruthless, forgiving, brilliant book.

When I began the first few pages of this book, on a sleepless night, I prepared to be bored by what, at first glance, seemed to be flowery language with no sweat shed.

How wrong I was. Roiphe has written the best memoir I have ever encountered. Each character is so well described that I swear I could pick any one of them out in a crowd, regardless of whether they are now dead or alive. I normally have some distaste for changes in tense, but Roiphe achieves this so artfully, I rarely noticed.

Roiphe, though her descriptions are vivid and not in any sense concise, does not waste a word. I sometimes found myself unexpectedly laughing, and at one point, incredibly, weeping. Her analogies, her descriptions, her words....all are just remarkably brilliant. I will never be able to forget her family anymore than Roiphe herself will. Her talent is nearly incredible.

Even when Roiphe is at her most descriptive, the reader is so present in this memoir, as if we are standing slightly to the side of Roiphe,, at her elbow, throughout the entire book. We understand everything.

I couldn't recommend a memoir more highly than I do this one, and at that, I couldn't recommend any book more highly than I do this one. I've found a new favorite.

This memoir got under my skin. I finished it a few days ago and I'm still thinking about it. Anne Roiphe's family seem monstrous and she doesn't always spare herself. I felt tremendous pity for her and her brother -- what could have become of such an intelligent, sensitive man if he hadn't been treated so badly as a child? I recently read Mary Karr's memoir of growing up in East Texas with poor and dysfunctional, but loving parents. It makes an interesting counterpoint to Anne Roiphe's rich, but cold family.

The name Anne Roiphe certainly evokes thoughts of feminism and this book gives a good indication of why the daughter, sister, and wife became the woman she has become. An interesting behind the scenes look at a dysfunctional & wealthy family in 1950's NYC...well-written and interesting not only for the historical perspective it gives us of 1950's wealthy Jewish NYC, but also for the heartbreaking story of a family that simply couldn't find one another.

As with all of Anne Roiphe's books, 1185 PARK AVENUE is powerfully written. The title refers to the address of the apartment building in which she was raised.

Still, as beautiful as her prose is to read, this is a difficult book. Her family was not a happy one, to say the least. And her personal history will not be of universal interest, appealing mostly to people of similar Jewish ancestry.

Yet there is no question but, that on a broader basis, 1185 PARK AVENUE offers a singular examination of a particular population. Inescapably, Roiphe had a sad childhood.

I picked up "1185 Park Avenue" looking forward to insight on growing up Jewish on Park Avenue in the 1940's/1950's. Instead I found myself drawn into Anne Roiphe's remarkably dysfunctional family, where no individual escapes unscathed from this hellish home. I found the memoir to have no redeeming message or purpose, except to let Ms. Roiphe express her rancour at her unfortunate circumstances. What bothers me most is that in becoming so engaged in the sadness and anger of her family story, these negative vibes served to make me upset too. Another triumph of evil over redemption.

Author Anne Roiphe explores the bonds of family and the tension of dysfunction that ultimately define the lives of those living at 1185 Park Avenue: A Memoir.

Her mother's money sets them up, while their father, dependent on it and upon the life it buys, displays his resentments in various ways. Anger, outbursts, disappearances--all could be described as symptoms of the symbiosis that ties them together.

Against this backdrop, the author and her brother, with whom she shares a difficult bond, grow to their adulthood, both fighting the connections they share while coming together frequently, almost as if the elasticity of the bonds is the strongest connection in their lives. Love/hate, push/pull--dysfunction at its most poignant follows them until, finally, the permanence of death changes the ties to memory and loss.

Roiphe's work is most memorable when she shares tidbits and insights about these original connections in our lives. Near the end of this book, she describes the relationship with her brother, who criticizes her frequently. "I was his sister. Who else had been there from the beginning, who else understood without saying, who would laugh at any joke, who would read the day's obituaries with him looking for friends of our parents who had at last bit the dust? Who else knew that his fair shake at this world wasn't so fair...."

The two of them were "witnesses to the same battles, children of the same parents, raised in the shadow of the Second World War before the winds of social change blew down on the country...."

No matter what kind of family we grow up in, the tie with siblings is one of those bonds that most closely approximate the strongest connections of our lives. Roiphe tells it better than any other writer I know.

As much as I could relate to some of the story, and as powerful as the words were, sometimes the journey was tedious and emotionally exhausting, which is why I chose to give this one four stars.

This is a truly wonderful book. So passionate. So honest. So powerfully written. Here is a woman who as a child had money and refinement yet had to deal with a most excrutiatingly painful family situation. Ms. Roiphe was no "poor little rich girl," though. There's not an ounce of victim or self-pity. She managed her situation from a very young age. And through her heart and actions worked to make her life turn out wonderfully. Bravo to her and to her book. She's shown us that many people, no matter how monetarily wealthy, need to struggle to survive. I hope this book becomes an Oprah pick. It's universal in its appeal. I loved it.

I didn't know anything about Anne Roiphe when I picked this book up and I found it fascinating. Her family is dreadful in every way; the cruelty with which the children are treated, the absolute waste of the parents' and their friends' lives is appalling. But there are some laughs, in a bittersweet manner, and I loved hearing some inside dirt about the despicable Roy Cohn.

This is a book by Anne Roiphe. It is about her family. Her family members aren't particularly likeable, but they're all she has. There is nothing much to say about this book. There are lots of words, but she only tells us what she wants to tell us. I am in the process of cleaning out my books, and this is not one I will keep. I would certainly never re-read it.