A review by belles_lettres
The Memory of All That: George Gershwin, Kay Swift, and My Family's Legacy of Infidelities by Katharine Weber

3.0

Got this as a free book from Goodreads...and I am glad I did not pay for it.

This book piqued my interest because I have had a fascination with Gershwin's music since a small child and own almost every single recorded song of his including his "Piano Rolls". I am also an old movie and Broadway buff and so the idea that there was someone who had inspired him and was somewhat successful in her own right intrigued me.

I have to say that I was greatly disappointed in the first half (approximately 125 pages) of this work. The author, Katharine Weber, whose grandmother inspired Gershwin and who the Kay in OH KAY was most likely modeled after was a background character during this first part. Her daughter, and the author's mother and also the father was the focus. While it is fine to set up all the people in one's work early on, the amount of space devoted to the failure of a father and as an entertainment man was not necessary in this amount. I would have liked to have known more about the author's "Ganz" as Weber calls her grandmother Kay Swift.

I understand that most of the documentation of what may or may not have transpired between Gershwing and Swift was not kept and that a certain amount of conjecture may need to take place. I would have been fine with ancedotes attributed to people Weber spoke with at various times. I also understand that the author had issues growing up with two persons who obviously did not know how to parent, and the pain described is palpatable but not necessary to the extent the author goes on about it.

To sum up, I enjoyed the parts of the book that related the title and what drew me in, but the book could have been better written.