Dead end gene pool : a memoir

Title:

Author:

Burden, Wendy.

Personal Author:

Burden, Wendy.

ISBN:

9781592405268

Publication Information:

New York : Gotham, c2010.

Physical Description:

viii, 279 p. ; 24 cm.

Contents:

Thirty-one moons -- Popeye -- Gaga in the jungle -- Terrapin soup -- My family and other domestics -- Ugly house -- DC -- Why they invented Florida -- A dose of religion -- Oi, Yank! -- George -- Maine revisited -- We'll always have Paris -- Go fish -- Checkout time -- Deposition.

Personal Subject:

Burden, Wendy-Childhood and youth.

Burden family.

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... West End	Book	929.209 B949	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

In the tradition of Sean Wilsey's Oh The Glory of It All and Augusten Burrough's Running With Scissors , the great-great-great granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt gives readers a grand tour of the world of wealth and WASPish peculiarity, in her irreverent and darkly humorous memoir.

For generations the Burdens were one of the wealthiest families in New York, thanks to the inherited fortune of Cornelius "The Commodore" Vanderbilt. By 1955, the year of Wendy's birth, the Burden's had become a clan of overfunded, quirky and brainy, steadfastly chauvinistic, and ultimately doomed bluebloods on the verge of financial and moral decline-and were rarely seen not holding a drink. In Dead End Gene Pool , Wendy invites readers to meet her tragically flawed family, including an uncle with a fondness for Hitler, a grandfather who believes you can never have enough household staff, and a remarkably flatulent grandmother.

At the heart of the story is Wendy's glamorous and aloof mother who, after her husband's suicide, travels the world in search of the perfect sea and ski tan, leaving her three children in the care of a chain- smoking Scottish nanny, Fifth Avenue grandparents, and an assorted cast of long-suffering household servants (who Wendy and her brothers love to terrorize). Rife with humor, heartbreak, family intrigue, and booze, Dead End Gene Pool offers a glimpse into the fascinating world of old money and gives truth to an old maxim: The rich are different.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

In her down-to-earth debut, the great-great-great granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt offers an insider's view of growing up in an old-money family rich with dysfunction.Burden and her brothers, "for all intents and purposes" parentless, were reared under the less-than-watchful eyes of hired help and her grandparents. The author's jokes about her grandmother's digestive system aren't funny enough to merit their frequency, but it's hard not to sympathize with a narrator whose girlhood was so bereft of discipline and affection. She describes her grandmother as dependent on Percocet and Dubonnet, and both grandparents as heavy drinkers living in their own private reality. After her alcoholic, anorexic mother remarriedto Burden's late-father's best friend, an arms dealerthe unhappy family relocated to Virginia. A move to suburban England followed, where the author's "pretty much friendless" teenage years were peppered with bizarre experiences like her mother giving her birth-control pills at age 14. After her grandfather flew her to Paris on the Concorde to celebrate her 16th birthday, "things in Burdenland spiraled downward faster than you can say amphetamine psychosis," and her life was marked by her grandfather's increased drinking and her little brother's suicidal tendencies, drug addiction and conviction that he was the reincarnation of their father. The author's unwavering determination to view her memories through a humorous lens pays off in her total lack of self-pity, but she occasionally comes across as glib and perhaps unable to look too closely at the root of her family's pain. Consequently, her unique experiences are often merely entertaining instead of affecting.Engaging but uneven.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.