When I heard about Dead End Gene Pool
by Wendy Burden I was attracted to it mostly because it was a memoir and I have really been failing on the memoir front lately, even though it is probably my favorite genre. The memoir recounts Burden's childhood, which was mostly unsupervised and full of wealth. According to the synopsis, "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 Burdens 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." I had to quote the back of the book on this one, because I don't think I could have described it any better myself. Personally, I had never heard of the Vanderbilts or the Burdens before, but I am sure they were very wealthy people.
The majority of the story is about Wendy's mother. At a young age Wendy's father committed suicide and left her mom free to live any way she wanted. The life she chose was a revolving door of men stapled by her favorite cocktails and days lounging in the sun. She is clearly an intelligent woman though, during the memoir she earns a Ph. D and studies ancient coins, but there seems to be something not quite right with her. Wendy complains about her mom a lot in this book, and rightfully so. In many instances her mother makes fun of her for being chubby, and she is constantly battling Wendy for her youth, even though she apparently has a wicked hot bod. Wendy goes the opposite direction of her mother (don't we all) and decides to ditch her mom's micro mini skirts and saran wrap dresses for long hippie skirts and earthiness. It's kind of hard to not hate her mom, especially when she tells Wendy she has to figure out how to deal with being a woman in her father's family and comes off as totally emotionless about her husband's death. At the same time though, I don't think Burden did enough to try to humanize her mother in the memoir. Maybe this is just something that has been drilled into me from nonfiction writing classes, but I do think it's important to create three dimensionality in characters, especially in nonfiction because your characters are real people. There are some attempts made later in the book, but for me it was just too little too late.
That's not to say Burden doesn't have a great voice. She has a biting wit, as evidenced by her commentary on the smallest parts of her life; "Modernism is such an inhospitable decor scheme for drinkers. There's a reason the classic English drawing room has remained soft and downy throughout the ages." Sometimes she makes really interesting comments on growing up as well, and for me these were the moments of the book where her writing really worked. One of my favorite quotations was this: "When you leave home, you instinctually modify the passage of time so that you, the child, develop at a normal rate, while your parents, and in my case my grandparents, age at about ten times that." I really enjoyed getting to know her throughout the book. That being said, there were times when I couldn't tell if I was actually supposed to feel bad for her because, as an example, her grandfather offered her a trip someplace even though he knew she couldn't leave, or if she was going for self-deprecation. I'm leaning towards the idea that I was supposed to feel bad for her, and I just didn't. Honestly, I think a little more personal reflection was really needed in this memoir to balance out the jibes she makes at everyone else.
This book earned a C. I received a copy of this book from a publicist.
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