Crazy Lady Brains are Always Trouble – “The Address” by Fiona Davis

I was happily surprised by how much I enjoyed this book.  It was an interesting look at the history (through fiction) of the famous New York city Dakota building – which is well known for being the place where John Lennon was shot, where famous people like Lauren Bacall lived and where parts of “Rosemary’s Baby” was filmed.

This book, like many as of late, cuts back and forth chapter by chapter between the presentish* (1980)  and the past.  In 1884, Sara Smythe travels from Ireland to run the staff at the newly built  Dakota.  So in the pieces of the past, Sara  finds herself struggling with class, understanding how the nouveau rich work, while also trying to manage her feelings for the married architect of the Dakota, Theodore Camden.

A century later, Bailey finds herself freshly out of rehab after too many nights living like a scene out of a Hunter S. Thompson novel.  She is out of a work interior designer, homeless and unsure if her sobriety will stick.  Her last hope is her wealthy cousin Melinda, who has inherited an apartment in the Dakota from her grandfather Theodore Camden (see the connection).  Melinda is quite excited to hire Bailey to oversee the modernizing of her apartment  – though Melinda’s vision has all of the amazing decor touches that so many of us are happy were left in the 80s (think pink bathrooms sinks and decorative bamboo).   As Bailey reluctantly helps Melinda achieve her decorating vision, Bailey begins to learn more through boxes and archives about Theodore Camden and the  woman who eventually was accused of murdering him, *insert dramatic music here* Sara Smythe .
The twists and turns are somewhat predictable but not painfully so.  There is a lot here about class and what society did with women who did not follow the rules.  Davis did her homework here and incorporates in her story the cutting-edge journalism that really helped reform the New York asylums and treatment of women in the 1880s.  She makes it clear that if a woman was too smart for her own good she would be punished severely and for the right amount of money you could make her disappear.

Davis also touches on how America really was meant to be a place where you weren’t born into society but, instead, you actually could climb the societal ladder – but then it became a place that was turning itself inside out to create the very nobility it had wanted to leave behind.   She touches on some tender parts of who we are as a country and where this seems to have led us.

This is not a deep book, but it is interesting with enough historical pieces to make it thoughtful and enough compelling story to make it fun.   It also makes me eternally grateful that asylums for sassy women are a thing of the past because sometimes I do use my lady brain too much.

 

*As an aside, I know presentish is not a word but shouldn’t it be?