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A review by hayleybeale
Jackie and Me by Louis Bayard, Louis Bayard
4.0
A lovely and wistful fictionalized account of the friendship of Jackie Bouvier and Lem Billings, covering the period between Jackie’s first meeting with Jack Kennedy and their wedding.
I realized when I started this book that I was pretty vague about Jackie Bouvier and Jack Kennedy during this period, and not much better informed about the subsequent period. I also thought Lem Billings was a fictional character until I read the author’s note at the end but it didn’t affect my enjoyment of the book and subsequent reading of Wikipedia told me little that I hadn't learned through Jackie and Me.
Lem has been friends with Jack Kennedy since school and was virtually part of the Kennedy clan. However, this novel puts Jack somewhat in the background and focuses much more on the relationship between Lem and Jackie. Though Lem narrates from 1981 when he is in poor health and has been left behind by both the Kennedys and Jackie, it is a sunny and joyful depiction of a deep friendship between two people who have more in common with each other than with the charismatic Jack, but who nonetheless feel that relationship is more important.
Jack asks Lem to keep Jackie company, and while Jack isn’t really courting her, he also wants Lem to keep his name in play. Lem, in this telling, plays a pivotal role in their relationship when Jack asks him to talk to her about what marriage with him would be like.
Jack himself is not a particularly sympathetic character: he is steered by his father, is a perpetual philanderer, and uses Lem as both a messenger and a stooge. The Kennedy clan are presented as cruel, insular, and self-absorbed without the glamor that reflects and is reflected off them.
Jackie is a woman of her times (and I do seem to be spending a lot of my reading time with American women in the 1950s) and her class. Though she spent some time in France and has an actual job - Inquiring Photografer with the Washington Times-Herald in which she asks people in the street increasingly loaded questions like “Should engaged people reveal their past?” - she still understands her purpose is to get married and have children. The disparity between how she (and other women) approach the idea of marriage versus how Jack sees it is brutal. Lem, who is so closeted he doesn’t appear to realize it, functions perfectly as the sexless companion to Jackie, though there are a few vignettes of his later, slightly more out life.
Though I learnt a little history, I would recommend this novel as a rich story of a deep friendship of two outsiders who are not sure if they want in but don’t know of any other option.
Thanks to Algonquin Books and Netgalley for the digital review copy.
I realized when I started this book that I was pretty vague about Jackie Bouvier and Jack Kennedy during this period, and not much better informed about the subsequent period. I also thought Lem Billings was a fictional character until I read the author’s note at the end but it didn’t affect my enjoyment of the book and subsequent reading of Wikipedia told me little that I hadn't learned through Jackie and Me.
Lem has been friends with Jack Kennedy since school and was virtually part of the Kennedy clan. However, this novel puts Jack somewhat in the background and focuses much more on the relationship between Lem and Jackie. Though Lem narrates from 1981 when he is in poor health and has been left behind by both the Kennedys and Jackie, it is a sunny and joyful depiction of a deep friendship between two people who have more in common with each other than with the charismatic Jack, but who nonetheless feel that relationship is more important.
Jack asks Lem to keep Jackie company, and while Jack isn’t really courting her, he also wants Lem to keep his name in play. Lem, in this telling, plays a pivotal role in their relationship when Jack asks him to talk to her about what marriage with him would be like.
Jack himself is not a particularly sympathetic character: he is steered by his father, is a perpetual philanderer, and uses Lem as both a messenger and a stooge. The Kennedy clan are presented as cruel, insular, and self-absorbed without the glamor that reflects and is reflected off them.
Jackie is a woman of her times (and I do seem to be spending a lot of my reading time with American women in the 1950s) and her class. Though she spent some time in France and has an actual job - Inquiring Photografer with the Washington Times-Herald in which she asks people in the street increasingly loaded questions like “Should engaged people reveal their past?” - she still understands her purpose is to get married and have children. The disparity between how she (and other women) approach the idea of marriage versus how Jack sees it is brutal. Lem, who is so closeted he doesn’t appear to realize it, functions perfectly as the sexless companion to Jackie, though there are a few vignettes of his later, slightly more out life.
Though I learnt a little history, I would recommend this novel as a rich story of a deep friendship of two outsiders who are not sure if they want in but don’t know of any other option.
Thanks to Algonquin Books and Netgalley for the digital review copy.