The subtitle of this biography is THE UNTOLD STORY.
It is over 20 years since Jacqueline Kennedy passed away, yet best sellers are still being written about her as well as magazine articles. There are certain dead, mainly women, whom the public of any era never tire of reading about. Jackie Kennedy is in the company of Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, Cleopatra, Elizabeth I, etc. Numerous others come to mind. They are women of mystery and we read hoping to find some nugget of truth never before revealed. The "untold story" is a misnomer. Though I read with interest, most of what the author has to say, has been said before. Nevertheless, there were parts of the book that were fascinating, especially her relationship of dependency on the various men in her life. Recently some letters were auctioned off, correspondence between her and Lord Harlech, David Ormsby-Gore who was very close to Jack Kennedy and with the Kennedy family. Along with her last love, Maurice Templeman, Harlech was one of the few men who genuinely loved her. There were men whom she dependent on but who in turn used her for their own ambitions, as did her husband, Jack. Lyndon Johnson, Onassis, and Bobby Kennedy all took back as much as they gave, using her fame for their own publicity. Bobby was known to refer to Jackie as, "my crazy sister-in-law."
The premise Leaming spins her tale around is that Jackie was a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder. Given what Jackie went through in her life, this is certainly most likely. It accounts for her mood swings, her depression, her strange outbursts of anger (sometimes physically striking out at others) and her desire to escape the publicity and just be safe. It could explain her marriage to Aristotle Onassis which horrified those who preferred to see her as a grieving widow. One cannot help but feel sympathy and sadness for Jackie for the many blows life dealt her, yet admiration also, for if she was suffering from PTSD, she held her head high and soldiered on, endlessly persecuted by the paparazzi and the insatiable public. The final blow was that just as she found some peace and happiness working as a book editor and patron of the arts in New York City, she contracted non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. She died at the early age of 64.
Leaming draws a good picture of what it was like to be Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy from her early years to her death. She doesn't spend a lot of time on the concurrent history of those years, but concentrates on Jackie's relationships. While the story of Jackie has been told many times, she still remains a woman of secrets and mystery, and therefore a person of interest. Having recently read the latest biography of Bobby Kennedy, it was interesting to revisit what Jackie was doing in those years, from her point of view. Her story never ceases to fascinate.
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