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A review by hbdee
The Second Mrs. Astor by Shana Abé
3.0
18-year old debutante Madeleine Force married the world's then richest man, John Jacob Astor, about one year after his divorce (a scandal in 1910), when he was 47. Returning to New York via Cherbourg, France after a honeymoon in Egypt, they were eager to experience the world's biggest, most lavishly detailed ship ever made: Richard Ismay's unsinkable Titanic. Madeleine was five months pregnant.
They had escaped New York, after a small wedding ceremony, because of relentless negative pursuit from the press.
Astor, along with many other of America's wealthiest men, went down with the ship.
This is an imagined tale as narrated by Madeleine shortly after the birth of their son, John Jacob Astor the sixth.
There's a lot of THE movie in this retelling, once again laser-focused on the ultra-rich. Madeleine is exquisitely pampered, especially during her pregnancy, and spends much of her pre-tragedy time in one luxuriously extravagant bed after another.
For this reviewer, who had to work on her feet up until two weeks before giving birth to a first child at 41--and had then to return to work full time six weeks after the birth--Madeleine is just too pampered to be particularly sympathetic, except when her story becomes a redux of Diana and the paparazzi responsible for her death.
Simply stated, this entire work is just too much of too much, especially in a time when a bare handful of people own over 80% of the world's wealth.
They had escaped New York, after a small wedding ceremony, because of relentless negative pursuit from the press.
Astor, along with many other of America's wealthiest men, went down with the ship.
This is an imagined tale as narrated by Madeleine shortly after the birth of their son, John Jacob Astor the sixth.
There's a lot of THE movie in this retelling, once again laser-focused on the ultra-rich. Madeleine is exquisitely pampered, especially during her pregnancy, and spends much of her pre-tragedy time in one luxuriously extravagant bed after another.
For this reviewer, who had to work on her feet up until two weeks before giving birth to a first child at 41--and had then to return to work full time six weeks after the birth--Madeleine is just too pampered to be particularly sympathetic, except when her story becomes a redux of Diana and the paparazzi responsible for her death.
Simply stated, this entire work is just too much of too much, especially in a time when a bare handful of people own over 80% of the world's wealth.