With the Rich and Mighty, Always a Little Patience

Every-so-often I take a break from romance novels. For non-fiction.

Yes, I'm a nerd, but I thought you already knew that.

At some point in the past few weeks I read a review, somewhere, about Dead End Gene Pool. So when it came across my library desk last week I decided to take it home and give it a shot.

Dead End Gene Pool, written by Commodore Vanderbilt's great-great-(etc.) granddaughter Wendy Burden, is a memoir about the life and times of a 20th century scion. The premise was intriguing and quirky: Her father committed suicide when she was young, and she spent her youth bouncing back and forth between her extremely wealthy and eccentric grandparents (old family money that had been expanded since the time of the Commodore), and her narcissistic mother whose only pursuits were the perfect tan and another husband.

Burden seems to have quite a detailed memory of the events of her childhood, though if those sorts of things had happened to me I might remember them with crystal clarity as well (at a certain point she indicates that she may be looking back on old diaries.)

It's a fun, if horrifying read-- a family servant tried to molest Burden at a certain point, and when she tells her mother, she's told to let the man have his kicks-- but not entirely riveting or shocking. In a world where Mackenzie Phillips writes a memoir to say that she had an incestuous relationship with her more-famous father, it's pretty difficult to shock and awe a reader with regard to effed-up childhoods.

As a memoir it was not particularly deep or thoughtful, more a recounting of events with little examination of the motives behind the actions. Burden's brothers are two dimensional characters whose presence is merely to illustrate how unwanted she was as the only girl in the family, and then to talk about the waste of their not living up to any expectations set for them. Her writing strength lies when talking about her animals, particularly the basset hound Obadiah, whose motives and personality received a far better analysis than the humans who own them.

Burden herself was more like a real-life Flavia De Luce, filled with diabolical schemes and a fascination with all things morbid and decomposing. In other words, she's wonderful to read about, but would have been an absolutely terrifying child.

As to her famous and infamous relatives, I would have preferred a more historical and deep look at them-- the last bits of the book, when Burden finally starts to unravel some of the secrets of her family's past, are the best parts. The tale of her grandparents' courtship found in their letters after they died would be fascinating, as would a further examination of the deterioration of her parents' marriage and the events leading up to her father's suicide.

Dead End Gene Pool is worth reading, but it felt like and introduction to something that could be a helluva lot more substantial. Let's hope she writes more.