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Customer Reviews | ||
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Also by Louis Bayard | “Wonderfully researched, beautifully crafted, movingly told."―Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less and Less Is Lost | A National Bestseller: “Riveting . . . Enticing.” —The Washington Post |
[Bayard] brings a poignant empathy, persuasive intimacy, and nuanced imagination to his interpretation of a relatively unexamined chapter in Kennedy lore.
Product details.
Louis bayard.
In the words of The New York Times, Louis Bayard "reinvigorates historical fiction," rendering the past "as if he'd witnessed it firsthand."
His acclaimed novels include The Pale Blue Eye, adapted into the global #1 Netflix release starring Christian Bale, Jackie & Me, ranked by the Washington Post as one of the top novels of 2022, the national bestseller Courting Mr. Lincoln, Roosevelt's Beast, The School of Night, The Black Tower, and Mr. Timothy, as well as the highly praised young-adult novel, Lucky Strikes.
A New York Times Notable author, he has been nominated for both the Edgar and Dagger awards, and his story, "Banana Triangle Six," was chosen for The Best American Mystery Stories.
His reviews and articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Paris Review and Salon, and he is a contributing writer to the Washington Post Book World.
A former instructor at George Washington University, he was the chair of the PEN/Faulkner Awards and the author of the popular Downton Abbey recaps for the New York Times.
His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Customers find the writing style well-written, witty, and lyrical. They also describe the characters as intriguing and poignant. However, some customers find the overall quality disappointing and a total waste of money.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the writing style well-written, enjoyable, and lyrical. They also say the author's language reminds them of how and unassuming.
"How I love Louis Bayard's writing! Witty, lyrical and unassuming, of his language reminds me of how I fell in love with literature in the days when..." Read more
"Although the book, which is compulsively readable , is fiction, it allowed me to see Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, one of my heroines, in a whole new..." Read more
"This book was hard to read . Sentences ran on forever. It’s fiction which I did not know at the time of purchase...." Read more
"...in words and deeds, and (although it's a novel) it reads with such autobiographical authenticity that I got lost in it, dreading those last few..." Read more
Customers find the characters intriguing and great historical figures.
"...skinny, sickly younger brother to the favored Joe Jr. Lem is a wonderful character , depicted and embellished by Bayard, the perfect sidekick—a gay..." Read more
"...He is, in the story of Jack and Jackie, the most intriguing character ." Read more
"...His portrayal of Jackie is also wistfully wonderful . Instantly one of my favorite books ever." Read more
" Great historical figures but slow story..." Read more
Customers find the content poignant and honest.
"An interesting viewpoint into the life of one of the most talked about relationships in history.Jackie as she meets and..." Read more
"...What if other paths were taken. No surprises- just honest feelings ." Read more
"Beautifully written and poignant ...." Read more
Customers find the overall quality of the book disappointing and a waste of money. They also mention that the book loses their interest after the second chapter.
"...It lost my interest after the second chapter ." Read more
"There’s nothing clearly objectionable here, but I was left feeling utterly unimpressed ...." Read more
"...He found it necessary to over use big, unnecessary words. Very disappointing and a total waste of money!..." Read more
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Terry Gross
Jill Ciment met her husband Arnold Mesches when she was his teenage art student. Random House/Random House hide caption
In 2017, when women across the globe were sharing their stories of sexual abuse and sexual harassment as part of the #MeToo movement, writer Jill Ciment had a realization: "My MeToo story is my husband."
Ciment met her husband, artist Arnold Mesches, in the 1970s. At the time of their first kiss, he was a married 47-year-old father of two; she was 17 and his art student. In her 1996 memoir, Half a Life, Ciment described herself as the one who pursued Mesches, but in her new memoir, Consent, she reconsiders their dynamic — and the origin story of their marriage, which lasted until Mesches' death in 2016.
In 'consent,' an author asks: 'me too did i have the agency to consent'.
In Consent , Ciment writes that it was Mesches who initiated their first kiss — a story that is in direct contrast with her earlier recounting: "I think I told it that way [in the first memoir] not so much to protect Arnold or my marriage, but more to make me a young, willful woman who went after something and got it — not as someone who was a victim," Ciment says.
But now, as Ciment looks back on her 45-year marriage, she's left wondering: Can a relationship that begins with such a clear power imbalance, where one person is legally underage, ever be considered consensual? She notes that attitudes regarding consent have shifted dramatically since she and Mesches met.
20 new books hitting shelves this summer that our critics can't wait to read.
"In 1970, he would have been a silver fox and I would have been the coolest girl on the block because I kissed my art teacher," she says. But, she adds, "Today you would probably use the word sexual aggressor, maybe even predator."
"It's a very complex thing," Ciment says. "Do I think he did something wrong? Yeah. I mean, if I saw men today 47 going after a 17 year old, I would intervene. However, it wasn't a time when people intervened. ... Would I do it differently today? Not for a second."
Consent Random House hide caption
On why she wrote that she had initiated her relationship with Mesches in Half a Life
In the most basic sense, I think that I wanted to empower myself. I didn't want to be telling a story that was about the older man going after the younger woman. That had been the trope of almost every novel and movie that came out from 1970 to 1990, whether it was [Italian director Bernardo] Bertolucci or [the novelist] Philip Roth. So I wanted to make myself who I really felt at least then, that I had that kind of agency to be the sexual aggressor, because I felt that was more of the truth to what I was telling. Is that really the truth? I don't know.
On Mesches being married with kids when the relationship began
I came from such a broken family. The whole family, my older brother and me and my mother threw my father out because he was so intolerable to live with. And so I just didn't see marriage as what I see it now, which is this huge commitment of two people to go through the trials and tribulations of life. I just saw it as this thing that kind of ended in a mess. I just had no idea of the damage that I was doing to another family at 17. That's as simple as I could put it.
On whether or not she thought about how their age gap would impact their marriage
I would say at 17, I did not think about that, because it's inconceivable at that age to imagine growing old. At 30, I probably gave it some thought. But Arnold was a really vital man, so he was able to keep up with me. Now that I'm 71 and ... I get exhausted when I do all the things that 71 year olds do, I start thinking: How did I not notice when I was 40 how tired he must have been? And I was oblivious to it. And one of the things that is so interesting about aging myself now is that I try to imagine: How did he keep up with a 40 year old? It's much more amazing to me now than it was when I was the 40 year old.
At a certain point, you realize this person is going to die away before you, and that knowledge changes the way in which you view your future. And it's both good and bad, like everything else. I mean, in one way you think to yourself, "OK, I will start my life again in my 60s, if he lives to be 90," and at the same time you think to yourself, "How can I start my life again at 60?" So it makes the end of our relationship much more precious. If you have a sick partner, for example, a partner who has cancer, suddenly the years that they have cancer before they die become kind of precious to you, because they're finite. And I think that was a huge lesson for me to learn. And I think that's why the marriage continued to have that kind of intensity, because we knew it was going to come to an end.
On becoming equals later in the relationship
It started to change at CalArts. So I would even say in my early 20s, simply because he may have known more about art, but I knew more about the avant garde. And so that was my sort of ace in a hole to become his equal. You know, I think as the relationship evolved, we traded roles as both mentor and student. We were very involved in each other's work. I felt free to pick up a paintbrush and paint over on top of his painting to show him what I thought needed to be done. And he felt empowered to cross off or throw out chapters that he didn't think were working for me. Obviously we waited for the other person’s permission. It was a very collaborative relationship. And so I think it balanced itself out for many, many years. And then the man painted 'til a week before he died. So it kept going.
On becoming old overnight when Arnold died
When you're living with somebody who's so much older than you, you are the person who always has more energy, and you are the person who is always the one who looks better, even when you look horrible. And suddenly, without him, I am my age without any kind of context. My age was always in relationship to his age. And suddenly, when he died, I found myself to be this age. And the most profound thing about growing old without him is understanding what he had been through that I couldn't even perceive. And that, to me, I find quite fascinating.
On meeting her second husband, Martino, on match.com
Jill Ciment is a professor emeritus at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Arnold Mesches/Random House hide caption
I was with Arnold since I was a child. [After his death] I just had this extraordinary experience. I met someone and I'm remarried. … There's not much of an age gap between us. This is the saddest thing: I've never known a young man. Because when I met [Martino], he was already 70. So I've never had the experience of dating a young man. So I guess that's not going to be part of my life story.
Heidi Saman and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.
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A digital book, “Drawing for Nothing,” highlights some of the best art from canceled animation projects like “Me and My Shadow.”
By Robert Ito
Among fans of canceled animated film projects — and yes, there is such a fandom, and it’s enormous — “Me and My Shadow” is perhaps the most popular cartoon feature that never was.
Greenlighted in 2010 by DreamWorks Animation, the film boasted a strong voice cast, including Bill Hader, Kate Hudson and Josh Gad, and a team of some of the industry’s top artists and animators. The filmmakers combined computer-generated and hand-drawn animation to create a lead character whose shadow had a mind and physicality all his own, at a time when few studios, including DreamWorks, were doing hand-drawn at all.
“For a long time, whenever I had visitors at DreamWorks, I would pull up sequences from ‘Me and My Shadow’ and other things I was working on, like ‘Kung Fu Panda,’” said Rune Brandt Bennicke, a supervising animator on the film. “Without fail, it was the ‘Me and My Shadow’ stuff where they went, ‘Wow, that was amazing.’”
Five years later, production was halted. “The reason we were given for canceling it was that the studio felt that its potential for box office was not what they wanted,” said Bennicke.
Since then, however, interest in the phantom film has only grown. Would-be fans scour the internet for concept art and clips, post their own fan art and fan-made trailers, and discuss — and grouse about — what might have been. There are numerous YouTube shorts and supercuts about the film; a short collection of unfinished clips and concept art — titled “The CANCELLED DreamWorks Masterpiece …” — has garnered more than 3.5 million views.
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Suggested Reading. "Jack and Lem," by David Pitts. Bayard describes Pitts's book as the "definitive nonfictional take" on Lem Billings's life. The book begins when the boys were 15 ...
Books Book Reviews Fiction Nonfiction Summer reading. ... "Jackie & Me" is a poignant, late-summer-afternoon kind of novel. There is a sweet, timeless joy in Lem and Jackie's shared scenes ...
3,137 ratings384 reviews. Master storyteller Louis Bayard delivers a surprising portrait of a young Jackie Kennedy as we've never seen her before. In 1951, former debutante Jacqueline Bouvier is hard at work as the Inquiring Camera Girl for a Washington newspaper. Her mission in life is "not to be a housewife," but when she meets the ...
As for Jackie, she's pure delight—beautiful of course, naïve but self-aware, her keen intellect showing small glints of the tough resilience she'll need later on when she's become an icon. Romance with bite: the perfect escapism for today's anxious times. 4. Pub Date: June 14, 2022. ISBN: 978-1-64375-035-4. Page Count: 352.
Jackie & Me, Louis Bayard's historical novel about the early days of courtship between John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy (née Bouvier) is narrated by JFK's real-life best friend, Lem Billings. The two men met as boys while attending prep school at Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut. Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings was born in ...
This book is called "Jackie & Me." And it is the story of the friendship between a real-life friend of J.F.K.'s whose name was Lem Billings. ... The Book Review Podcast: Each week, top ...
Out of 22 reviews, 18 gave the book four or five stars. Jackie & Me is a well written and engaging book about the relationship between Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings (the best friend of John F. Kennedy) and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, before she became the iconic first lady. Bayard writes in the voice of Lem, who develops a friendship with Jack ...
Jackie & Me. by Louis Bayard. Publication Date: June 13, 2023. Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction. Paperback: 368 pages. Publisher: Algonquin Books. ISBN-10: 1643753894. ISBN-13: 9781643753898. In 1951, former debutante Jacqueline Bouvier is hard at work as the Inquiring Camera Girl for a Washington newspaper.
What The Reviewers Say. The ingenuity of Louis Bayard's new novel, Jackie & Me, is that it doesn't try to penetrate the black box of the Kennedy marriage by writing about it directly. Instead, Bayard seeks an answer by focusing on the before: the years when Jack and Jackie were still two distinct individuals, a young man and a younger woman ...
Bestselling author Louis Bayard is back with a brilliantly wrought, witty, and sensitive novel about the young Jacqueline Bouvier before she became that Jackie—and about a marriage that almost never happened. In the spring of 1951, debutante Jacqueline Bouvier, working as the Inquiring Photographer for the Washington Times-Herald, meets Jack Kennedy, a charming Congressman from a notorious ...
I loved Louis Bayard's fictional versions of Jack and Jackie as seen by Lem Billings, Jack's "wing man" during their courtship. The wistful tone of Lem's memories was poignant and endearing. Bayard's depiction of Jack and Jackie's relationship rang very true to me and gave a sense of depth and humanity to their iconic images. Highly recommend.
Jackie & Me. Hardcover - June 14, 2022. This "absolutely irresistible" historical romance imagines the courtship between Jacqueline Bouvier and the future American president she loved (People). In 1951, former debutante Jacqueline Bouvier is hard at work as the Inquiring Camera Girl for a Washington newspaper.
About the Book. Jackie & Me by Louis Bayard. Genre: Historical Fiction. Publication Date: June 14, 2022. Book Review. A charming reflection on young Jackie and Jack from the point of view of the best friend you've never heard of, Lem. Lem became best friends with John F. Kennedy, known as Jack, in college and soon began summering with the ...
About the Author Louis Bayard is the critically acclaimed bestselling author of nine historical novels, including Jackie & Me and The Pale Blue Eye, which was adapted into the global #1 Netflix release starring Christian Bale.His articles, reviews, and recaps have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Salon, and the Paris Review.His work has been translated into more than a ...
Jackie & Me. This "absolutely irresistible" historical romance imagines the courtship between Jacqueline Bouvier and the future American president she loved (People). In 1951, former debutante Jacqueline Bouvier is hard at work as the Inquiring Camera Girl for a Washington newspaper. Her mission in life is "not to be a housewife," but when she ...
None of this, though, ultimately detracts from the sheer enjoyability of this novel. "Jackie & Me" is a story perfectly tuned to our ongoing fascination with the Kennedy marriage — and a novel, like Jackie herself, with charm to spare. Anna Pitoniak is the author of "The Futures," "Necessary People" and "Our American Friend.".
"All of Louis Bayard's incredible gifts as a teller of stories we think we already know are on brilliant display here: a captivating setting, unforgettable characters, and an entirely surprising take on a familiar tale. Jackie & Me is riveting, funny, charming, and haunting. He makes it look so easy! I will happily follow Bayard wherever he ...
Louis Bayard is the critically acclaimed bestselling author of nine historical novels, including Jackie & Me and The Pale Blue Eye, which was adapted into the global #1 Netflix release starring Christian Bale.His articles, reviews, and recaps have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Salon, and the Paris Review.His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Thank you Algonquin Books, #partner, for the advanced copy of Jackie and Me in exchange for my honest review. Publisher: Algonquin Books Published: June 14, 2022 Summary: Master storyteller Louis Bayard delivers a surprising portrait of a young Jackie Kennedy as we've never seen her before.
Reading Guide Questions. Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers! Although the bulk of Jackie & Me takes place in the early 1950s, the story is told by Lem Billings from the vantage point of 1981. What does this perspective do for our understanding of the book and its characters?
Maureen Callahan's lurid "Ask Not" paints the Kennedys as mad, bad and dangerous for women to know. By Louis Bayard Louis Bayard's novels include "Jackie & Me" and the forthcoming ...
For me, the race issue is a big one. I thoroughly understand where writers are coming from when they say that they want to be realistic about the treatment of Jackie Robinson or whichever African-American they're writing about. But I just can't endorse the use of the n-word, which is used repeatedly in this book.
Jackie & Me. Kindle Edition. by Louis Bayard (Author) Format: Kindle Edition. 4.0 933 ratings. See all formats and editions. This "absolutely irresistible" historical romance imagines the courtship between Jacqueline Bouvier and the future American president she loved (People). In 1951, former debutante Jacqueline Bouvier is hard at work as the ...
Ciment met her husband in the 1970s. At the time of their first kiss, he was a married father of two; she was his art student. In her memoir Consent she reconsiders the origin story of their marriage.
Pruitt's book (in which he uses the author pseudonym Ziggy Cashmere) showcases character studies, 3-D models, concept art and storyboard sequences from a host of would-be animated features.