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Them: A Memoir of Parents

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Francine du Plessix Gray who, has written several fine novels as well as complex and satisfying biographies of the Marquis de Sade and Simone Weil, now tenderly explores the lives of her famously mercurial parents. "Them" is a success any way you look at it; the elegant writing and the loving way she examines the life she had with these completely self-absorbed people make this memoir worth reading.

Her parents were Tatiana Yakoleva, a renowned New York designer of hats, and Alex Liberman, who was one of the creators of modern fashion journalism at Vogue. The du Plessix in Francine's name comes from her birth father, a hero of the French Resistance who died early in World War II. Although he never adopted her, Alex Liberman was the father she knew and loved, the man she and her mother always saw as the one who rescued them from the horrors of war. Tatiana had already fled one revolution, leaving Russia to live in Paris as a teenager with her grandmother, aunt, and uncle. In her early 20s, she met the dynamic Russian revolutionary poet and playwright Vladimir Mayakovsky during one of his visits to France. He wrote one of his most beautiful poems to her and begged her to return to Russia with him. But her fear was too great, and she married diplomat Bertrand du Plessix before Mayakovsky could return to again persuade her. Mayakovsky had been under growing scrutiny for his criticism of increasing oppression in the new Soviet Union, and he committed suicide shortly thereafter. His letters were one of the Tatiana's most carefully guarded items when she fled Europe.

Photos from the family's arrival in New York make them look like a tight-knit trio, but Tatiana and Alex were terrible parents. They shuttled off Froshka, as they called her, with all sorts of extraneous family and friends. A friend had to tell her that her father was dead. They failed to tell her when they got married. They were as ambitious and thoughtless as two people can be. But they loved her very much.

What makes this memoirs so remarkable is how warmly du Plessix Gray writes about all this. She does not see herself as a victim, which is probably why she has a close and healthy family life as an adult. Beautiful writing, fearlessness, and compassion make this a memoir that will hold readers captive from start to finish.

"Them" is an engrossing read. Mrs. Gray portrays her parents in their full roundedness with no holds barred when it comes to revealing their faults as well as their virtues. In reading the memoir, I found myself saying "what fascinating people yet how obnoxious. . . how powerful an emotion love is to permit a daughter to see all her parents' faults and still treat them with respect." The book is also a portrait of a time and an industry (magazine publishing) and of people finely attuned to the needs of fashionable society. It's also about Change and how we all become outmoded when our work fails to meet changing fashions.

I saw the author at Barnes & Noble earlier this year, and knowing nothing about her as a writer, I dismissed her book as one more self-involved memoir. Was I ever proven delightfully wrong! Her parents' story is so beautifully told, in sentences so artfully crafted as to create an esthetic experience of the highest level. You feel she has carefully adjusted every nuance, every word, and placed each sentence for maximum effect. In fact, I wonder if her gift for exquisite language is not akin to her mother's for the perfect placement of decoration on her hat designs. There is a similar obsession with the telling detail, a similar esthetic sensibility. I loved this story, it moved slowly but it was ultimately so satisfying. There are really several, four or five, stories -- the colorful Russian relatives, the family's escape from France and early years in New York, the author's upbringing as a neglected child of privilege, the later years of Tatiana's decline and Alex's marriage to a Philippine nurse (read: interloper) and his alienation from Francine and her children. There is so much sheer story telling skill here, told with artistic virtuosity. Francine du Plessix Gray has entirely won me over, and I thoroughly appreciate her as a writer and as a woman of depth and generosity. Most of all, this memoir is indeed one "of parents", not of herself, and that she keeps herself fairly in the background is one of the foremost accomplishments of this luminous memoir.

This is a book of many parts. A daughter's memoir of extraordinary parents it is, which was what I expected. And indeed that is the organizing thread. But it also offers delicious insights into the Conde Nast publishing empire. It's about fleeing France in 1940 - about fleeing the Russian revolution in 1920 - about the emigre experience - about arrogance, pride, generousity,selfishness and monumental ego. It's about Paris between the wars and America during and after WWII. A story beautifully written, lovingly told - and I honestly couldn't put it down.

Even at 70-something, du Plessix Gray felt the need to exorcise the demons left in her psyche by her self-absorbed, not-so-nice parents. This memoir is a tour-de-force of writing and memory, so skilled in its mining of eras and people long gone that it leaves little but astonishment in the mind of the reader at just how she did it. She has a great ability to tease out every nuance of events that occured many decades ago, including dialogue. Is it real? That's open to question. A New Yorker contributor and author of a previous bio of the Marquis de Sade, du Plessix Gray leaves nothing unturned in her evocation of what comes across as an emotionally deprived, yet full, childhood as the daughter of a dead French war hero and the former mistress of the poet of the Russian Revolution. She discovers more than a touch of sadism in her mother and step-father. Flaws: A much too long first half that dwells on her interesting white Russian ancestral lineage. It's only half way through that the book really picks up steam when the mother and father - "Them" - emigrate from France to New York a step ahead of the Nazis in WWII. The tale that then unfolds is revelatory, both for how the author depicts her parents' impact on her development, as well as for her description of what swaths both cut through the NY intelligentsia of the time. I'd never heard of either before this book, though probably should have known the step-father, Alex Liberman, who became the mastermind of the Conde Nast fashion mag empire later acquired by the Newhouse family for whom I once toiled as a newspaper reporter at one of their hinterlands cash cows. Could Alex really have been as brilliant as she describes? And was the mother, Tatiana, who never bothered to learn English, as neglectful as depicted? By the end, the book takes a tragic twist when we learn that the mother was a drug addict for most of her life and long before the Betty Ford Clinic was ever invented. The father's remarriage in his 80s is made to seem sad as well, even at a time when he was raking in $1 million a year from S.I. Newhouse for showing up at the offce once or twice a year. No wonder Newhouse Newspapers never paid its minions very well. Stick with this tale, overlong though it is. Its rewards are ample.

I absolutely loved this book. Du Plessix Gray describes her parents' lives with insight, intelligence, honesty and humor. She offers us a behind-the-scenes look into a world that its inhabitants were obsessed with keeping hidden from view. The degree to which her parents' lives intersected with the history of the twentieth century is amazing. Unlike most memoirs, Du Plessix Gray delves deeply into the historical context. The pace never lags; I was enthralled from the first page to the last.

A great read and very engrossing story. Francine du Plessix Gray has a way of conveying her family's history and her experiences in childhood and adulthood without ever sounding bitter or resentful.

Before this book was released I had never heard of either Francine du Plessix Gray or her parents Tatiana and Bertrand (and her step-father Alexander). In fact, the only reason I picked this book up at all was due to a glowing review published in the Toronto 'Globe & Mail'. I am certainly glad I did.

Tatiana du Plessix and Alexander Liberman were, as the book tells us, one of New York City's first 'power couples'. Predecessors of Donald and Ivana Trump, if you will. She was a milliner at Saks Fifth Avenue whose hats were de rigeur among New York's female elite in the 1950s, and he was the art director of the Conde Nast publishing empire, which was (and still is) responsible for such publications as 'Vogue', 'Vanity Fair' and 'GQ'. They had a loving but volatile relationship, with more than a hint of S&M ideology at times (Tatiana was the emotionally distant, domineering matriarch and Alex was the cowed, sexually inexperienced paterfamilias who dedicated his life to satisfying Tatiana's every whim and consistently submitted to her desires) Add their precocious, sometimes troubled daughter Francine to the mix and you have all the ingredients for a fascinating glimpse into the parenting foibles of the rich and famous. And, I'm pleased to say, Ms. du Plessix Gray does not disappoint.

The first half of the book is dedicated to the family history of both Tatiana and Alexander (both of Russian descent), their separate emigrations to France, the birth of Francine, and finally their escape from Nazi-occupied Paris during WWII. The second half chronicles the life of the du Plessix clan in New York City, specifically their rises to (and falls from) power, and Tatiana's descent into drug addiction and alcoholism.

This memoir has numerous things going for it. First of all, this entire family has a fascinating history, and over the course of the 20th-century they hobknobed with some of the world's greatest luminaries. For example, Coco Chanel, Salvador Dali, Jackson Pollock, Marlene Dietrich, and the famed Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (whose great muse was Tatiana herself). Secondly, their daughter Francine has a very crisp, graceful prose style, and she is able to reflect on her parents' behaviour with admirable objectivity. Amazingly enough, she can comment on their various transgressions without coming across as angry or resentful.

This is not a perfect book, however, and as wonderful as it is there were certain aspects that I disliked. First of all, I found that the book devoted a little too much space to the family histories of Tatiana and Alexander, and as I mentioned, it takes almost half of the book before we even get to New York City. All of this background information was fascinating, but I thought that some of it could have been omitted in the interest of brevity. Secondly, I found du Plessix Gray's intellectualizations forced at times. She often attempts to comment on the suspected motivations of her parent's actions, and while these are interesting suggestions, they often come across as dull and pretentious. As Freud once said, 'sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.'

However, despite these relatively minor flaws, 'Them: A Memoir of Parents' is a compelling, fascinating read. Sometimes the behaviour of the du Plessixes will shock you (they ask an adolescent Francine to pose nude for them, for instance), but I do not think the book is at all attempting to villify the du Plessixes. Rather, I think it is trying to give us insight into a notoriously enigmatic couple who, despite their seemingly pathological need for attention, were both extremely guarded individuals. I do not normally read biographies, but I greatly enjoyed this one and I strongly recommend it.

Francine du Plessix Gray's Them is a powerful family memoir set against the backdrops of the Russian Revolution and World War II. Surviving either of these cataclysms would be dramatic enough, but du Plessix Gray's mother, Tatiana Yacolevna, and step father, Alexander Liberman successfully negotiate both to become fashion icons in post-war New York. Tatiana's chaste love affair with Soviet poetry great V. Mayakovsky and the heroic death of her first husband in the French resistance add grand backdrop against which Them plays out.

Upon arriving in New York in 1940, Alexander Liberman embarks upon a distinguished career as an editor at Conde Nast which extends for over 50 years. Tatiana establishes a hat salon at Saks Fifth Avenue that propels her to the upper echelon of the millinery trade. Together, they become the embodiment of New York fashion industry and cafe society, their influence reaching its zenith in the 1940s and '50s, and Liberman's influence extending well into the 1980s.

But the glittering facade hides numerous flaws. Alex and Tatiana are single-minded in their business and social pursuits and frequently farm Francine out to friends or to the household help. Du Plessix Gray's voice in this memoir is frequently that of a young girl, then young woman sadly awaiting her chance for admission to the charmed circle, and capturing her parents' attention all too infrequently.

The facade frays further as Alex and Tatiana age, with Tatiana's Demerol addiction unrelentingly shadowing their private lives and Alex's growing recognition as a sculptor. And following Tatiana's death, the aging Liberman periodically turns on and estranges himself from du Plessix Gray and her family.

The remarkable heart of Them is du Plessix Gray's love for her parents and theirs for her, despite the many cruelties and sadnesses they inflict on her over the years. Them captures beautifully the fact that most lives and relationships are double-edged, with achievements and kindnesses displayed side by side with addictions, shortcomings and cruelties.

For this reader, the iconic images of Them are two images of Alex Liberman asking Francine if she is enjoying her lunch. One such event takes place with Liberman in his prime and Francine at age 10, the second with Liberman hospitalized and dying at age 87, an aging Francine at his bedside. Happily, love often endures despite the indignities inflicted on it.

I'm a fan of Francine du Plessix Gray ("The Women of the Marquis de Sade" is stunning) so I picked up this book with anticipation.
Mrs.du Plessix Gray did not let me down but the parents she is remembering in this "trio-biography" left me absolutely cold. Plessix Gray takes us through her mother's life in Russia, the literary world there, the Revolution, her escape to France, their Parisian life, meeting Alexander Leiberman, their life as a family in war-time France and finally imigration to New York. It is from the time of that new life in New York that "THEM" began to start gripping my throat. One watches the rise of the Leibermans in the fashion and art worlds of uptown New York in the 1950s and 1960s with astonishment and incredulity. They appeared to me to be of modest talents but had the exquisite knack of being in the right place at the right time, were fully convinced of their own superiority in addition to being snobs of the first order. Plus, as exotic, artistic European refugees they were fashionable just after the war and they knew how to throw a party. Voila: Attitude + Style + Connections + New York = SUCCESS (it was ever thus). It is the evolving psychological portrait that she draws of Tatiana of Saks and Leiberman of Conde-Nast that is chilling then disgusting and in the end pathetic, that held me in a hypnotic state, like a snake with a frog. It's a very interesting voyeristic look at a world that has a minimum of interest for me but it is a world that had a certain significance on American culture for good or for bad. What really captured me was Francine's own story, her childhood, her relationship with "THEM" (as if you could have one) her teens & young adult life on into her adult married and professional life. So there she was, a natural writer, being given a ringside seat to this peculiar, manipulating, ambitious couple of human beings joined together for lives that came to no good end. Yes for me it was Francine who shines through both as an evolving human being and a writer, writing in her smooth, clear voice, that made it a worthwhile read. The truth is that I could hardly put it down but by the time I did I immeadiately wanted a bath, a shower and a shampoo.