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What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship, and Love Paperback – Bargain Price, June 5, 2007
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What Remains begins with loss and returns to loss. A small plane plunges into the ocean carrying John F. Kennedy Jr., Anthony's cousin, and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, Carole's closest friend. Three weeks later Anthony dies of cancer. With unflinching honesty and a journalist's keen eye, Carole Radziwill explores the enduring ties of family, the complexities of marriage, the importance of friendship, and the challenges of self-invention. Beautifully written, What Remains "gets at the essence of what matters," wrote Oprah Winfrey. "Friendship, compassion, destiny."
- Print length264 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateJune 5, 2007
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.7 x 8.4 inches
- ISBN-10074327718X
- ISBN-13978-0743277181
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Editorial Reviews
Review
-- USA Today
"Stunning...Radziwill gets at the essence of what matters -- friendship, compassion, destiny."
-- Oprah Winfrey, O, the oprah Magazine
"A riveting and heartbreaking journey."
-- Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle
"A stunning memoir of love and loss...Carole Radziwill is a natural storyteller."
-- O, The Oprah Magazine
"One of the best memoirs...a small masterpiece...devastating and beautifully written."
-- New York Post
"Powerfully affecting...a highly compelling read."
-- Vogue
"Bittersweet and tender."
-- The New York Times Book Review
Review
-- USA Today
"Stunning...Radziwill gets at the essence of what matters -- friendship, compassion, destiny."
-- Oprah Winfrey, O, the oprah Magazine
"A riveting and heartbreaking journey."
-- Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle
"A stunning memoir of love and loss...Carole Radziwill is a natural storyteller."
-- O, The Oprah Magazine
"One of the best memoirs...a small masterpiece...devastating and beautifully written."
-- New York Post
"Powerfully affecting...a highly compelling read."
-- Vogue
"Bittersweet and tender."
-- The New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Prologue
Friday, July 16, 1999
Three weeks before my husband died a young couple smashed their plane into the Atlantic Ocean, off the Massachusetts shoreline, well after the mid-July sun had set. It was reported in the news as 9:41, but I knew the general time, because I had spoken to the woman less than an hour before. The pilot was my husband's cousin, John Kennedy. His wife, Carolyn Bessette, was my closest friend. She was sitting behind him next to the only other passenger, her sister, Lauren. A still, hot summer day had melted into a warm and sticky night. A quiet night, unremarkable except for the fog, which rolls in and out of New England like a deep sigh.
While we were still making plans, before they took off from Caldwell, New Jersey, she called me from the plane.
"We'll fly to the Vineyard tomorrow, after the wedding. We can be there before dinner."
It was a short conversation, because I was going to see her the next day. I was staying in her house, their house, on Martha's Vineyard, with my husband, and they were taking a simple trip. One they'd made many other weekends, from a small airport in New Jersey to the islands off Massachusetts -- a well-worn ninety-minute path up the coastline.
I hung up the phone and opened the book I was reading and an hour later she was dead. Afterward I tried to find something to explain what had happened -- was it cloudy, were the stars out? But the night was ordinary. It usually is, I think, when your life changes. Most people aren't doing anything special when the carefully placed pieces of their life break apart.
They flew a lot that summer, from the city to the Vineyard, and we called each other every day if we weren't together.
"We're getting a late start. I'll call you in the morning."
It takes seconds to plunge into an irrevocable spin in a small plane -- into what the Federal Aviation Administration calls a graveyard spiral. According to the accident report, the plane broke the surface of the ocean three minutes after the pilot sensed a problem. At 9:38, he made a curious turn. One hundred and eighty seconds later, the last thirty of them aimed directly at the water, their stories ended abruptly.
I wonder if he felt the awkward motions of the plane in those minutes, the changes in speed or direction. It's likely he did not. If you close your eyes in an airplane, you don't feel up or down. You don't feel yourself tilting right or left. You don't feel anything, really, and your senses tell you it doesn't matter. Clouds were hiding the familiar strings of lights that paint the coastline. He might as well have been flying with his eyes closed.
"I need to talk to you," I said.
My husband, Anthony, was dying and we were all trying to pretend that he wasn't, that everything was fine.
"I can't hear you, Lamb. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"
The accident report shows the pilot made a turn after passing Point Judith, Rhode Island -- he turned east, away from the coast, away from where he was going. And then another turn, and then another. It was puzzling to everyone, including the investigators, and after months of plotting radar signals, studying twisted pieces of wreckage, constructing maps and charts, and speculating about state of mind, they confirmed what they had suspected -- the pilot was disoriented. He may have turned, some suggested, hoping to spot something familiar. A landmark like the lighthouse at the tip of Gay Head, blinking a steady twenty-mile stream of light, muffled that night by thick, black air. He might have scanned the dark sky for Noman's Land -- the empty island you can see clearly in daylight from the beachfront of their Martha's Vineyard home.
Perhaps he felt a slight tilt of the plane, but it was more likely that the instrument panel caught his attention, his compass shifting slowly. He may have tried to correct it, turning the rudder slightly -- or adding pressure to the controls. But when it doesn't feel like you're turning, it feels wrong to correct it. He wouldn't have corrected it enough. He wouldn't have corrected it at all. He would have followed what his senses were telling him to do -- an overwhelming feeling of what he should do -- and it would be exactly the wrong thing.
It's possible that nothing felt unusual in the plane as his altimeter began to unwind, marking a perplexing descent. Slowly at first, then at a sickening rate. It is likely he was watching this helplessly. His senses, of no use to him, telling him to ignore, even then, irrefutable evidence. The handful of controls all showing deadly readings. She may not have noticed any of this. She wouldn't have seen the airspeed on the control panel, pegged in the red, reflecting the quickening pace of the ocean rushing up to them.
We were staying in their house because Anthony wanted to be on the Vineyard that summer, and I went along with it. In June when we arrived I gave the ambulance drivers a paper with directions to the house, and they taped it to the dashboard. "It's the chance of a lifetime," Anthony had said to me in a restaurant in New York before we left. "I don't know why you can't see that. We have the summer off, we can spend the days on the beach, have margaritas at sunset."
There were sunsets that summer, and when I noticed them I was grateful. But he was dying. It was likely, but unmentionable, that he wouldn't be going back to the city, and for everyone but Anthony it was hard to think of margaritas. It irritated him when I didn't play along.
One hundred and eighty seconds. John might have felt annoyance, perhaps, before panic. Frustration, and then fear. His pulse accelerating as one replaced the other. The water would be as black as the sky -- like concrete, at their rate of descent. It is possible that he thought for the entire three minutes that they were going to crash, probable that he thought it for thirty seconds.
It was a new plane and I wasn't familiar with it. It bothered me that I didn't know where she was sitting. The accident report recorded passengers in the aft-facing seats, but I couldn't picture her there. When I rode along, we settled down on the back seat and read magazines under the small light. If there were other passengers she sat up in the front. One weekend a year before, there were five of us going to the Vineyard. Carolyn was sitting next to John and her door popped open over the ocean. She stretched her arm into the clouds to grab the handle and clicked it shut. It was quick and smooth and insignificant to her.
But in the dark, on this night, did she sense his frustration and impatience? Did she dismiss it? We were all frustrated and impatient that summer. She was sitting directly behind her husband, the backs of their seats touching. He could have, if he had wanted, reached a hand around his seat to her. Her sister was beside her.
I sometimes mark time now in three-minute intervals. When I am talking on the phone, or walking around the city, or sitting on a plane, I glance at my watch and reflexively mark the time. There is so much that can happen in three minutes. It's enough time to think you can fix things.
I'm sure she was reading magazines. She always took a pile of them because she scanned them quickly and she didn't like to run out. She sounded tired when I spoke to her. Her voice was soft. She was trying to distract herself. We were all trying to distract ourselves. It was a bad day, if you had to choose one, to die. There had not been enough time.
"I love you," she said before she hung up. And then again, "I love you." We always said this to each other, but I didn't want to love anyone that night. I was tired, and I didn't say it back. "I know," I said instead.
You never know when something is going to happen to change your life. You expect it to arrive with fanfare, like a wedding or a birth, but instead it comes in the most ordinary of circumstances. The Roman goddess Fortuna snaps her fingers and changes the channel -- click. I was sitting in a chair, reading, preparing for one death, and then click. It was silent. Was there a noise? I always thought tragedy had a sound. I always thought there was something you would hear. We were holding our breath until Anthony died. Believing that everything else would wait.
Carolyn had a theory about relationships.
"You're much happier when you wait," she used to tell me. "The ones that come to you are the only ones worth anything, Lamb. It's like standing on the shore and spotting something in the water. You can splash around to try to get it, or you can wait and see if the tide brings it in."
I was thinking this while I stood on the shore one day, dreading what the tide would bring. Her makeup bag, a luggage tag.
The weekend before, we were all at the house. She came early in the afternoon, and John flew in later. Effie made a big dinner of grilled fish and roasted potatoes, pie for dessert. John had arranged for him to be there that summer. He cooked for us and maintained our routine -- dialysis in the morning, the beach during the day. A table set for dinner at a planned time each night. We welcomed diversions. We'd have dinner, linger at the table, play Bartlett's if we were up for a game.
We had friends staying for the weekend and we were all sitting in the backyard, waiting for John, and suddenly a plane was right above us. He flew low, buzzing over the house before he landed, a fun thing. He broke up tension. He always knew to. A sort of childish but innocent thing to do, flying over us, dipping the left wing. Just like him. We all looked toward the sky.
"Hey!" We waved. Except Anthony, who just shook his head, a reflex after so many years. Anthony's eye roll and John's sideways smile. I got you, Principe.
"He's here!"
Carolyn looked up, smiling, squinting, her arm in front of her to block the sun.
"He's crazy," someone said, laughing. He brought people to life. He could relax a room, and we counted on him for it...
Product details
- Publisher : Scribner; Illustrated edition (June 5, 2007)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 264 pages
- ISBN-10 : 074327718X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0743277181
- Item Weight : 8.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.4 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #44,811 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #146 in Rich & Famous Biographies
- #389 in Women's Biographies
- #1,328 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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I hardly ever write reviews but this book was so moving that I felt compelled to do so. Anyone who has lost someone suddenly or fought cancer will appreciate this book. But there's so much more to this book. It's a story of love and loss, working hard and fighting hard.
This is why I like this book:
1. It's a Cinderella story, and who doesn't love Cinderella stories? The bride was not unattractive, but by her own admission, she was not model material. As with most Cinderellas, she had no pedigree and her family was solidly middle-class. But unlike most formulaic Cinderella stories, it appears there was no Grand Recognition when they met for the first time while they worked on a project together for ABC. Carole even dubbed them most likely to not do anything together in the future and noted their many differences: neat night owl versus messy morning person, for instance. But over time he fell in love with her brains and personality, which was another reason to cheer her on and to love the story. The respect he had for her smarts --he trusted her with his life and she handled every aspect of his medical treatment-- is evident in their story.
2. I understand biographies are self-centered by nature, but I generally find most "celebrity" stories, whether in book or interview form, tiresome to read. There's much humble-bragging about their "problems." to which most of the human race cannot relate, interspersed with a constant thread of I'm-so-wonderful. ( Gwyneth and Julia, anyone?) Carole's writing style is self-effacing and honest. She weaves a story of how fortune, both good and bad, has worked in her life and in the lives of others.
3. I left this book with complete admiration of her writing. The story itself is heartbreaking. Over a very short time period she endured unimaginable losses. Her closest friend and her husband's closest friend died in a plane crash. Her husband's death from cancer followed three weeks later . Her husband's death was somewhat expected, but losing Carolyn and John Kennedy was not. How one would experience it, let alone write about it, I can't imagine, yet she does it in a way that is neither self-aggrandizing nor self-pitying. (And there is plenty of reason for self-pity, IMO.) She candidly recounts how illness and cancer strained her and her husband to their limits. She presents their struggles with illness and death in a realistically heart-breaking way. It kept my attention.
4. Plenty has been written about Carolyn Bessette Kennedy as a coke-addled, brainless bimbo fashionista. In Carole's story, we see another side of CBK. Carole makes the case convincingly that Carolyn was a funny, delightful and loyal friend.
5. The timeline is logical. Flashbacks should only be done if one is a skilled writer or has a skilled ghost writer. Christina Haag's novel jumped between time periods and it wasn't well done and I found it distracting. In addition, Haag's book was a yawner and I didn't finish it. Carole's novel starts with a dispassionate discussion of the plane crash, then to her Cinderella wedding. She goes back to spend a little time on her childhood and her close Italian family, then she discusses how her life intersected with Anthony and where they went from there. The book ends with a return to the plane crash, but by this time you've gone full circle and you see the emotional impact: she and Anthony were the second people to know John's plane had not arrived at the destination; she had to put the pieces together; she was the one who notified the Coast Guard and started the notification process to the family. Anyone who's had one of those calls late at night can relate to the anguish she and her husband must have been feeling.
As an aside, I had a neutral/no opinion of the Kennedys prior to this book, but my opinion of them was not improved after reading this book. After John junior's sudden death, they circled the wagons and treated anyone who wasn't a blood relation callously. Two days after the crash Carole planned to go to a meeting with the Kennedys to discuss what to do about a funeral. She was going at the behest of Carolyn Bessette's mother. (Carole's husband Anthony was presumably too sick to attend.) Carole writes it was "gently explained" by the Kennedys that she, Carole, was not welcome to attend. She ultimately did not make the meeting due to a late plane, but she learned the Kennedys first wanted to bury John alone in the family plot and not include his wife Carolyn. (All three, Carolyn, John and Lauren Bessette, were ultimately buried at sea.) And while Caroline Kennedy, John Junior's sister, was close to Anthony, this hospitality was not extended to his wife.
tldr: If you are interested in the Radziwills/Kennedys, you'll want to read this book. It's moving and well done.
The book did get better the more I read, and I'm glad I kept reading it. There was a detached feeling to the entire book, however, that left me feeling empty. That is what remained after reading her book - a very empty feeling. I never could detect any passion that Carole felt for her husband Anthony. I could certainly feel her devotion to him. And affection at times. But no passion. And yet one of the few times she seemed to be able to express passion involved a very brief meeting she had with a reporter overseas while she was in grad school. The contrast between the way she talked about that one encounter vs. the way she talked about her husband was very stark and disconcerting. The way she describes her relationship with Anthony makes it appear to be more one of companionship than of one of love. They seemed to have two things in common - ABC and fighting cancer. I didn't find her to be particularly appealing as a person, which I think is because she came across as so detached, even as a child. With good autobiographical books, you connect with the writer. That did not happen for me ever with this book. But I found a lot of her story to be very interesting and even profound at times. I respect her drive, and I want to believe that she and Anthony were in love, having found each other after growing up in very different worlds. I also deeply respected his drive, and I thought she did a great job conveying what a fighter he was. He is a man who wanted to live and who kept living life to the fullest even as he suffered immensely.
Of course, I also found her discussions of the Kennedys to be interesting. However, she wrote with more affection about John Kennedy and Carolyn Bessette than she did about her husband or her own family, and that was a little creepy at times. She gushed about each of them, especially Carolyn, with an intensity she didn't show when writing about her husband. But she also provided interesting insights into John's and Carolyn's relationship and seemed to genuinely love them. Her relationship with Carolyn, while sweet and supportive, was also quite juvenile and high school-feeling, most notably in the way they talked to each other and the games they played. It seemed as though Carole became instantly infatuated with Carolyn after meeting her once. This struck me as odd, especially considering the fact Carole doesn't write about any other friends in her life in her book. As for her feelings about Caroline Kennedy, I thought her judgment of Caroline showed a revealing lack of perception on Carole's part. Caroline is an intensely private person, for good reason. It is logical that she would be protective of her only sibling and of her family. It is also understandable that, as a child of Jackie O, Caroline might find Carole and Carolyn quite off putting at times. Carole was never able to remotely grasp that, however. But Carole's description of the events surrounding the plane crash that killed John, Carolyn and Lauren Bessette was quite compelling. I cannot imagine (and never want to be able to imagine) the horrific losses she experienced with the plane crash so unexpectedly coming just as her husband was on the verge of losing his incredibly intense war with cancer they had waged their entire marriage and he had waged for a decade.
I don't know if Carole Radziwill's background in broadcast journalism is what caused her to be so detached from people and from her life in this book. And maybe her detachment is what led her to a career in broadcast journalism in the first place. Reading this book you got the feeling she was reporting it, like she was producing a segment from her days at "Peter Jennings Reports." There were interesting stories that she "reported," including little tidbits like her description of Tipper Gore's interesting mother, but it felt more like segments of her life pieced together - almost like an objective third party was writing it as opposed to someone who lived it and felt it with any passion. There was a disconnect that was there from the beginning that never really went away. I agree with another reviewer who said that maybe she wrote the book too soon after the tragedies she suffered, although I think it is very likely has a lot more to do with her personality than it does with her timing. Her descriptions of her mother (which never give you an understanding of her) early in the book may give greater insight into her detached personality than anything else. I'm glad I read the book, but it did not affect me the way I thought it would. The unthinkable tragedies Carole experienced remind me to appreciate life each and every day, but her detached and cynical nature remind me how important it is to connect with the people in your life. As an aside, after finishing her book I read that she signed on to participate in the reality TV series, "The Real Housewives of New York." I have to admit that I found that odd. I also read she has a net worth of $50 million, so she's not going on that show because she is desperate for money. I have never seen that show, but I may watch to see how my perception of her from reading this book fits with or differs from how she is on reality television.












