Customer Reviews

Surviving High Society - Lots of Love Trumps Lots of Money

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Synopsis:

This autobiography begins with a description of the heroine's parents, their affair, subsequent marriage and divorce. Elizabeth was given up for adoption the day after her birth and her name changed within months of her birth to Patricia Elizabeth Marvin. Adopted by a wealthy and emotionally unstable mother and a kind father, Elizabeth also had a younger brother by adoption named Ted. They lived outwardly enviable lives - huge houses, servants, luxury vacations and all that comes with being one of the wealthiest and oldest families in America. Glamourous and beautiful, Elizabeth becomes close friends with Hepburns and Hemingways. Through carefully chosen anecdotes, Elizabeth demonstrates the ways in which their mother controlled the children's lives from their early years. We learn that the household was dysfunctional from its early days and the facade of this idyllic life crumbles with her father's death.


After her father's death at 22 years of age, Elizabeth lived in relatives peace with her mother in their large Connecticut house. Accustomed to presenting a proper front, Elizabeth finds herself outmaneuvered by her mother and her team of lawyers, doctors, and bankers. Elizabeth voluntarily commits herself and begins a lifelong struggle in and out of psychiatric hospitals. Despite these odds and lack of support, Elizabeth is able to find her a way outside and make a good life for herself without her mother's help. With a loving husband as her partner, she starts a business, a new life, and makes her own success.

Review:
From the blurb and the title, I was aware that the story would have shades of Mummy Dearest - a controlling and unstable mother that would reach out to control her children through her fortune. In this way, the book did not disappoint. I was surprised to find myself liking the narrator and worrying about the measures that she'd take and the plots that she was unable to spot in her youth. Despite her huge fortune and the rather long discussion of her antecedents, Elizabeth is a very sympathetic character. I found myself enjoying the book and its clear narrative. It was particularly interesting to learn what life was like growing up in the 40s and 50s. It's an enjoyable read and a good way to spend a few hours.

I would recommend this book to people interested in social gossip and in a narrative of a young girl finding her identity.


I'd like to thank Bostick Communications for the courtesy copy of Surviving High Society: Lots of Love Trumps Lots of Money by Elizabeth Marvin Mulholland.

Rating: 3 out of 5
Published: 2008 by Itasca Books (176 pages)
Cover and Format: Straightforward picture of the Author as a young woman.

Like most people, even if I do not like to admit it to myself, I have a bit of a fascination for OPLs (other people's lives). I do feel this is a rather universal trait and is shared by many, even though, like me, many do not want to admit it.

This is a true story of one woman's life; Elizabeth Marvin Mulholland, and I must say, it is a rather fascinating read. It helps that Mrs. Mulholland seems to be a natural story teller and does have the ability so articulate her stories through the written word. Many people have lead interesting, happy, tragic and fascinating lives, but they fail to have either the ability or motivation to tell us their story. Fortunately for us, this author has both.

Mrs. Mulholland started life with a mother, and father that really did not want her and at a very young age was adopted, along with another young child, a boy, by a wealthy and influential family in Connecticut. She entered into a world of money, privilege and indeed, entitlement, real or imagined. Being beautiful, bright, athletic and rich, she had, so to speak, it made. Or did she?

To be brief (you really need to read this one), life for this young lady was not a bed of roses from the beginning and certainly went down hill from there. From an extremely controlling and alcoholic mother who probably had some sever mental problems, to years of forced periodic admissions to a psychiatric hospital (The Snake Pit), to a truly abused and troubled step brother; the death of her beloved stepfather and finally complete disinheritance by her rather sinister and controlling step mother, we have an underlying story of a truly strong woman; a survivor by any definition of the word.

The reader will be reminded of the conversation between Fitzgerald and Hemingway (a conversation which actually probably never took place, per se, but never-the-less is imbedded in our collective literary minds), where Fitzgerald states that "the rich are not like you and me," and Hemingway replies in agreement, "yes, they have more money." As we read the story of Mrs. Mulholland, we find that both men were right in so many ways. The rich are different but their only distinguishing difference is the money. Of course we find that having the money does indeed have an effect on their actions and how the perceive the world around them and solve problems far differently, but to the same ends, as the less wealth. All else is the same; there is the good, the bad and the ugly. People are people wherever you find them and they all share the same traits; rich, poor, powerful or weak. This work brings the stark reality of these statements directly to the reader.

This is a rather well written biography and is quite readable. The author does follow a rough chronology, but at times drifts from one period to other, but she does this quite effectively and enhances her story by doing so. We are allowed glimpses into the lives of some of the people she associated with. I particularly enjoyed the sections dealing with Katherine Hepburn and her family.

Now this is a strange sort of story. At first you cannot help feel sorry for the young Elizabeth. This transitions into a feeling of "what is this woman thinking" sort of feeling, and ends with a great amount of admiration for the older Elizabeth. This was and is one tough lady and you have to admire her and her ability to overcome adversity that many would find daunting, if not impossible.

This is a good, well written and well crafted read. To be honest, once I started it, I had trouble putting it down and more or less went from cover to cover with few breaks. This is certainly one you will want to add to your reading list.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

Elizabeth Marvin Mulholland, in the opinions of most people, was an extraordinarily lucky girl. An illegitimate child born to two fairly prominent but highly self-absorbed people, she was adopted by a wealthy couple and raised in the lap of luxury with neighbors like the Hepburns, long vacations that allowed her to mix with royalty on occasion, and seemingly everything she could desire at her disposal. Unfortunately, behind the comfortable facade lay a lot of misery. Her adopted mother was devious and controlling, her adopted father (the source of the only real love and comfort young Elizabeth received) died suddenly when she was in her twenties, and her younger adopted brother was so unstable he was institutionalized after trying to kill their mother.

Elizabeth spent years in and out of mental hospitals, committed by her mother whenever she failed to please or tried to assert her independence. She was heavily medicated, endangering her physical health, and purposely kept as some sort of permanent child to satisfy her mother's demands. It sounds too horrifying to be true, but wealthy people have always been able to bend the rules and suborn others to satisfy their own proclivities. When Elizabeth did finally break free from her mother's control, she was punished by being disinherited. After a tumultuous romantic life, Elizabeth at last found happiness, security, and love and lives a fulfilled and pleasant life today.

This book is written in a series of short chapters or vignettes, arranged roughly chronologically. It does a good job of portraying the life of a strong woman who survived years of chronic misery. Its rare that such books have happy endings, and its nice to know that Elizabeth, whom I grew to admire and like a lot, was able to write one.

I do not usually read memoirs; it's not a genre I dabble in very often. But when I saw this book come across my review choices it got my interest so I requested it. And I have to say I was not disappointed. The book is a fast read, and an interesting look into a young woman's life.

How she finds herself to be under the thumb of a vengeful parent, and has to climb her way out. Giving up the so called silver spoon that has been hers for her life to find her own way. That is something that not a lot of us would do I suppose. But Elizabeth found a way, and while her life was forever altered it can't be said that it was a bad way.

I feel the only thing missing from this book was a level of anger that must have been felt. If my mother treated me the way Elizabeth's treated her I would have been bubbling over with anger. Perhaps it just show that she is a bigger woman than myself. But over the entire book is a good one, and if you enjoy memoirs you will enjoy it.

Elizabeth was a product of a love-obsessed mother, hell-bent on capturing and keeping the man of her dreams. Selfish womanizing biological father, determined to erase any proof of his love affair with her mother-convinces her mother to put her up for adoption. Eager to do anything that he pleases and win over the man she so desperately loves, Elizabeth tasted her first bite of abandonment as a newborn.

Soon adopted into an affluent family (with too many connections to mention) Elizabeth is raised to rub elbows with all who is holy and famous. We are quick to discover behind this family facade lay secrets so disturbing and so heartbreaking, it'll have you feeling thankful to have lived the life of less.

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EXCERPT:
The door to my room closed. I whispered to my Dad, although he was downstairs and could not hear me: "Dad, I am not going to appear at the dinner table with this hairdo! Why didn't you marry someone else and then adopt me?"

I stuck my head under the faucet and washed most of the goo down the bathroom sink. Then I rinsed my hair a second time. After I pulled the tangles out with the brush and dried my hair with the hair dryer, it was slightly frizzy, but it was flat on my head. I put cold water on my lip to stop the bleeding.

I walked into the dining room as Mother was excitedly saying, "Ed, she looks just like a princess! Just absolutely beautiful!" She turned, looked at me. and started to yell,"What have you done, you ungrateful child? After all that work to make you look like a princess!"

Both of her fists went up, pummeling the air in front of my face. Ignoring her, I slid into my chair. "Dad, it is my hair, you know. And I'm not a princess. I'm just me. Isn't that enough?"

Chapter 2, "Becoming a Princess".
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After the death of her adoptive father, her adoptive mother (already eccentrically unstable) snaps and with (what feels to me) like anger and resentment, juggles Elizabeth from mental institution to mental institution. Having the money to do as she wants, Elizabeth mother convinces doctors to keep her locked up and drugged up - and Elizabeth has not the money to argue.

Surviving High Society is an eloquent inside look of the lives of the rich and famous. Elizabeth Marvin Hulholland speaks fluently, painting vibrant imagery with her words. One must take a mental note that this autobiographical tale does skip back and forth through out her life, which can be initially distracting. Although Mulholland does not follow the rules of order, the story is still intriguing and beautifully sculpted. The only thing that truly distracted me from loving this book was the continual name dropping. The mention of (insert famous person here), (there), and (here), made it hard to relate (and/or) believe the story in it's entirety.

Sometimes I wanted to say "Mulholland - too much! I don't care if your father worked with so and so. I don't care if you shared a cookie with so and so's granddaughter." Many times through out the book, it just became too much. So many names dropped, that I could not possibly remember them all. If a character is not easily remembered once the book is closed then you are most likely okay with eliminating any mention of them.

Even so - the story is worth reading. Mulholland is a picturesque example of a "normal" girl in a not so "normal world" and her efforts to fit in, and then get out.

A quick and rather short read, Surviving High Society is served best while sitting in your favorite reading spot and sipping a pot of your favorite tea. Make sure the phone is near by because you'll want to call your Mother and thank her for being - dare we say it... fan-lovin'-tastic.

From the outside anyone would have thought Elizabeth Marvin had the perfect life: a wealthy family, an expensive education, extravagant vacations, and more. But hiding behind the perfect façade was a deeply troubled childhood for Elizabeth and her brother, both of whom were adopted. Elizabeth's memoir, Surviving High Society tells of her life growing up around the world of New England monied families, her difficult relationship with her controlling mother, and the refuge she found with her father, and eventually, with her husband.

Born in 1940, Elizabeth's memoir takes us through the 1940s, 50s and 60s, and touches on the life of Katharine Hepburn, whose niece was a friend. While the situations she describes offer a fascinating glimpse into society life of the times, there is not enough detail about her family situation to really help the reader understand the bad experiences she talks about. It's almost as though the training Elizabeth must have had in holding back her emotions is still at work even as she cracks open the door to let us know a little bit about what went on inside her home.

While I don't believe this is a perfect choice for mother-daughter book clubs, I found it an interesting book to read for it's historical context and to learn about one woman's struggle to become her own, independent person in a time that was difficult for women to assert themselves.

I found this to be a fascinating memoir. More a series of vignettes, rather than a straight-forward autobiography, Elizabeth's story captivates. After her beloved father died, her adoptive mother was the one with the mental issues, but managed to get Elizabeth committed to the psychiatric hospital. I was appalled at the control her mother was able to exert over the doctors and the hospital: the falsification of medical records and the unnecessary, non-therapeutic medication.

Elizabeth managed to leave the hospital and have a life in and around her visits back. There were even times of happiness and enjoyment: good friends with welcoming families, trips and cruises, brushes with fame and royalty. However, her controlling mother was always difficult. Once Elizabeth cut the apron strings and left home, even at the risk of disinheritance, she still struggled with finding herself and overcoming adversity.

This could be a depressing book, but it wasn't. It was an enthralling glimpse into the wealthy WASP world, especially in the 50s and 60s. The adage that money can't buy love or happiness is well represented here. Elizabeth is to be commended for her ability to rise above a difficult upbringing.

The author definitely has had a life that is worth writing about; being born out of wedlock, adopted into a rich family, losing her adopted father at a young age, having an abusive mother and a suicidal brother. I found Ms. Mulholland's story an interesting one that and found her book to be a rich in detail as what is what like to live in such a world and how she overcame it. Oh, did I forget to tell you that her mother had her confined to a mental institution? With this and more, she explains how she was able to live a fairly normal life.

I am one of those people that likes to read biographies and memoirs especially about those who have overcome adversity in their lives. Surviving High Society certainly fits in that category. I was born and raised in CT so I felt a connection to the places mentioned by the author especially since the author was born in the same generation as my parents.
There were times that the story seemed almost unbelievable especially in relation to being confined to a psych hospital in the early 80s. I worked in a pediatric psych facility just 9 years later and I can't imagine any of the administrators being bribed to keep someone there unnecessarily... but then our hospital was not for the rich nor famous

Elizabeth Mulholland didn't survive photogenic poverty like Frank McCourt. She grew up with gobs of money and a chasm in her soul. Enclosed in WASPy privilege in coastal Connecticut, she lived under her mother's thumb, found herself bounced into psychiatric captivity for being headstrong, and lived as a casualty of upper-crust brutality.

Mullholland grew up sitting on a powder keg. Her slim memoir reveals the wounds lurking under the shiny surface of New England wealth. The pretty Camelot-era debutante on the cover survives family violence, abusive medicine, crime, and more to emerge into a world of love and nurturance, kept afloat by resilience and uncanny business sense.

Her history is structured into a number of short stories, most less than ten pages long. She feels no need to bore us by laying out a tedious gestalt of every suffering she has survived; she cuts straight to the most important experiences that let us make sense of her life. I appreciate this clarity, which makes her story easy to grasp.

I wish we had a little more background, though. We see her family conflicts only when they reach a crisis point, so we get only glimpses of what led to that crisis. When things explode, she often is forced to cram in explanations when we want to see what happens right now. A little set-up would make her payoffs smoother.

That being said, though, this is a striking portrait of human hardiness and the strength love lends to us. We should all hope to survive such crushing circumstances to emerge as strong and fully human as Elizabeth Mulholland. Her story is an inspiration for all of us who have to survive the privations of too much stuff and too little love.