Customer Reviews

Under a Wing: A Memoir

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Reeve Lindbergh's memoirs are a must read for anyone who has read the diaries and letters of her mother and father, Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Reeve's disclosures on what it was like growing up as a Lindbergh tie all the rest of the books about the family together. The passages concerning the kidnapping of Reeve's brother are haunting, and for the first time, you see this child as someone's brother, not a subject of a newspaper account. The similarity between Reeve Lindbergh's writing style and that of her mother's is striking and quite poignant.

Somehow you just imagine that children of the famous are well taken care of and have a choice of things to do with their lives. Being a student of the Lindbergh writings and accomplishments for more years than I care to admit; I gave little thought to the children of Charles and Anne. If you read the writings of Charles Lindbergh you get a sense of a life well ordered and possibly ridgid, of a disaplined mind and a man who requires disapline around him. It never gave me cause to think about what kind of father he would be, but I had my suspicions. It was refreshing to read about the good times as well as the bad with her Father. It eases the mind to know that he wasn't a "Daddy-dearest", however he had his quirks. Reeve paints a story about a life before and after losing her father that is rewarding and taxing, just like our own. About loss and gain, but mostly loss. However after losing people close to you, it's hard to not focus on the loss. I finished this book and was emotionally drained, Reeve takes the reader on a roller-coaster emotional ride.. much like her Mother's writings. When all is said and done I had answers to questions I had wondered and learned new things I had not known before. What more could you ask of a book?

Caught the author Reeve Lindberg on the Oprah show recently when Peter Jennings was her guest.During the brief time she spoke impressed me greatly that I went out and brought the book.It is an intimate detailed biography of growing up with a famous dad who wasnt there most of the time.She only talks little of the kidnapping as she was not born at the time.I liked that for all there fame John and Anne(who is still alive)were determined to give their kids a normal childhood.One of my ten best biographies for the decade.

Previous reviews are accurate about the quality of this book and the content, but neglect to mention that it is an extraordinary work of literature. Ms. Lindbergh has composed a series of memory-reflections (she consciously eschews hyphenations like that but I don't know how else to say it), connecting each to the next like a string of pearls. The prose is beautiful, the depth of detail always just right, the psychological observations and self-reflections are compelling, and though her book is more thematically focused, I would rank it with Arthur Miller's "Timebends" among brilliant autobiographical essays. A little-known gem of a book. And look at that cover photo!

I did enjoy reading this book, but the writing seemed to be "too" much like poetry. I would have liked more interesting facts, and less posturing to be relevant for every thought and feeling. I also did not get a good sense of Reeve's feelings regarding her sister until the middle/end of the book. If she was as crucial to Reeve's life (as she seems to infer at the end), why does it take so long for Reeve to write about her? But this is a good, interesting reading experience . . . just have patience with it.

Reeve Lindbergh tells stories that we want to hear about everyday life with her famous, complicated father and her intelligent, artistic mother. Reeve's delicate, precise prose is reminiscent of her mother's style of writing. A reviewer said of Anne Lindbergh that she "combed" her life for meaning and the daughter seems tuned into that same compulsion. It helps that she writes with as much insight as did her mother. The passage that describes the hours mother and daughter spent together after the death of Reeve's child is heartbreakingly revealing of the private Anne and her anguish after the kidnapping and death of her own child. Reeve's reminiscences of flying with her father (she was not an enthusiast) and her longing for her enigmatic father are poignant. She does not avoid discussing Lindbergh's perceived anti-Semitism; she does not attempt to defend him but rather keeps her emphasis on the effect this controversy had (and has) on her connection with him. I challenge any daughter to read Reeve's account of her visit to her father's childhood home without weeping.

There can be no doubt that Reeve Lindbergh's memoir is the most touching book about that family that I have read. Through her eyes we go beyond the covers of other books and see what it really meant to be a Lindbergh.

They were almost a closed society onto themselves, yet they still experienced the same joys and sorrows as the rest of us. We find the man who was depised as an isolationist to be a concerned and loving father who read to his children.

We dine with the children at their grandmother's house and we soar above the Connecticut house on Saturdays. The famed aviator at the controls and a bored child in the rear seat.

After reading this book I felt very attached to this famous family. Being the same age as Reeve herself, my only knowledge of the Lindbergh's was the famous flight and the kidnapping as I read in history books. Now, after this book, I feel as though I have become part of them.

It can only be summed up in one word, wonderful.

Through Reeve's gifted writing, readers get to know what it was like to be part of the Lindbergh family. At last, we find out what has happened to the Lindbergh's since the kidnapping. Reeve described a bedside visit to her dying grandmother, when her father "administered communion to three generations (grandmother, Charles, Reeve) with malted milk tablets." Anecdotes such as this, plus an honest recollection of childhood years, make Under A Wing a good read.

I have nothing to add about this fascinating, well-written book. But I do want to urge people who have read Under A Wing, and other books about the Lindberghs, or by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, to also read Reeve's novel, The Names of Mountains. It provides another side of the story of this family. A fictionalized account of growing up Lindbergh, it provides insight into Reeve's experiences and her relationship with her mother, and the sorrows and joys they shared.

I have read lots of books about the Lindbergh's, including A Scott Berg's, also All of Anne's diaries and always wondered why she did not continue after the WAR WITHIN. Reeve's lovely tribute to her parents provided warm famliy insight into this celebrity family. It increased my admiration of Anne Morrow Lindbergh and her strength as a wife, woman and mother.