What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship and Love
Carole Radziwell
I was so excited when this book ended up on our schedule for book club and I wanted to love it so much. I didn't hate it but I'm not going to run out and buy it for my collection or read it again. No disclaimers are needed for this book because everyone knows what happens or will remember once they start reading. Ironically, we read it the week of the anniversary of JFK, Jr's death as well.
The book is not solely about JFK, Jr. though. It is about his cousin, Anthony Radziwell and his wife Carole, who remains his loyal spouse throughout five years of cancer. The couple really never has a life without the awful disease. Carole writes from the heart about the struggles of marriage to not only a man dying of cancer far before his time but also a Polish prince and the nephew of one of the most iconic American presidents, John F. Kennedy. It's hard to fathom how she survived that summer, a summer that was supposed to be spent treasuring her final days with her husband on Martha's Vineyard. Those days were cut short not by his death (which would come eventually - only weeks later) but the untimely death of his cousin, John and his wife, Carolyn, Carole's best friend.
Carole Radziwell
I was so excited when this book ended up on our schedule for book club and I wanted to love it so much. I didn't hate it but I'm not going to run out and buy it for my collection or read it again. No disclaimers are needed for this book because everyone knows what happens or will remember once they start reading. Ironically, we read it the week of the anniversary of JFK, Jr's death as well.
The book is not solely about JFK, Jr. though. It is about his cousin, Anthony Radziwell and his wife Carole, who remains his loyal spouse throughout five years of cancer. The couple really never has a life without the awful disease. Carole writes from the heart about the struggles of marriage to not only a man dying of cancer far before his time but also a Polish prince and the nephew of one of the most iconic American presidents, John F. Kennedy. It's hard to fathom how she survived that summer, a summer that was supposed to be spent treasuring her final days with her husband on Martha's Vineyard. Those days were cut short not by his death (which would come eventually - only weeks later) but the untimely death of his cousin, John and his wife, Carolyn, Carole's best friend.
The parts of Carole's memoir I found most interesting were her detailed accounts of her childhood and teenage years and her life at ABC. After reading this book, I realized that neither Carole or Carolyn really fit the mold for a Kennedy-Radziwell wife. They were definitely no Lee or Jackie with childhoods complete with trips to Europe, summers on the Rhode Island coast or elaborate dinner parties. Yet the men loved them and overlooked these faults and ignored the comments made by their famous mothers and sisters. These stories of her past were much easier to read than the detailed accounts of hospital stays and grief. Some of those sections seemed to almost be written in a different voice but I can understand it being hard to relive those days and then write about them.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in history. These couples were more than historical figures though, often appearing in the tabloids, so they were part of pop culture. It was a much different glimpse of the famous family than what I've read in the past in JFK, Jr.'s biographies and The Day John Died. I don't want to say she was on the outside but she was some of the time, so it's a different perspective.
Happy Reading!
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