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Savage Grace (Movie Tie-in): The True Story of Fatal Relations in a Rich and Famous American Family | 
| Authors: Natalie Robins, Steven M Aronson
Publisher: Touchstone
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $6.46
You Save: $9.49 (59%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 263072
Media: Paperback
Edition: Mti Rep
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.4
ISBN: 1416571108
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.15230924
EAN: 9781416571100
ASIN: 1416571108
Publication Date: May 13, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A spellbinding tale of money and madness, incest and matricide, Savage Grace is the saga of Brooks Baekeland, heir to the Bakelite plastics fortune; his beautiful wife, Barbara; and their handsome, gentle son, Tony, who destroyed the whole family in a violent chain of events.Savage Grace unfolds against a glamorous international background (New York, London, Paris, Italy, Spain); features a nonpareil cast of characters (including Salvador Dali, James Jones, the Astors, the Vanderbilts, and European nobility); and tells the doomed Baekelands' story through remarkably candid interviews and private letters and diaries, not to mention confidential hospital, State Department, and prison documents. A true-crime classic, it exposes the envied lives of the rich and beautiful, and brilliantly illuminates the darkest corners of the American Dream.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Still a true crime classic September 30, 2008
Savage Grace is a riveting, oral history of the Baekland dynasty that started with so much promise, and ended with a tragedy. It begins in the 1970s with the murder of Barbara Baekeland by her son, Anthony Baekeland. It then delves into the history of Bakelite (a plastic)which was invented by the GreatGRandfather of the family Leo Hendrik Baekeland in the early 20th century. This invention made the family very wealthy (and was also used in the atomic bomb, I had no idea of this until I read the book). The book discusses Brook Baekeland, Leo Baekeland's Grandson in detail and his excessive spending and aimlessness. He marries Barbara Daly, and the marriage is a disaster. Barbara Daly-Baekeland has a personality disorder and is a spendthrift social climber. She smothers her son, Anthony, a gentle soul who is eventually diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and does not accept his homosexuality (to the extent that it is commented on by several people interviewed that Anthony reported sleeping with her). The FAther Brooks BAekeland does not accept his son's personality so he neglects his son. It discusses the decadence and decline of this family, which culminates in the murder of Barbara Baekeland by Anthony.
I originally read this book when I was in high school and did not finish it due to not understanding the oral narrative style the authors chose to use. I recently picked this book up and finished it due to the movie on HBO that was released last year. It was beyond my comprehension in high school, but now that I am older I appreciate it.
This book has everything someone interested in true crime would like. Incest, murder, untreated mental illness, scandal, social climbing, celebrities, and american and european nobilty appear in abundance in this sad tale. This book is up there with the other true crime greats Helter Skelter, and Fatal Vision. It is a classic that is well worth your time.
 boring August 19, 2008
I thought this would be a fascinating read. Not so. It is simply one statement after another by different people regarding the Baekland family. These statements do not tie together smoothly, nothing to keep a good rhythm or flow. Turns a fascinating subject into a boring read. The book is as interesting as a police report.
Plastics July 29, 2008
This excellent oral history Natalie Robins and Steven M. Aronson of the doomed Bake-lite plastic heir Tony Baekeland (and of his beautiful mother Barbara, whom he slept with and later stabbed to death) has been enjoying renewed interest since the release of Tom Kalin's beautiful but somewhat limp film adaptation of it starring Julianne Moore. I came to the book through the movie, but the book is so much more interesting than the film version that in many ways it puts it to shame. Robins and Aronson wrest a compelling and very trickily wrought narrative arc out of their archive of letters, hospital reports, police accounts, and interviews: we start with Barbara Baekeland's stabbing in 1972, and the narrative follows both Tony's progress through the courts, the Broadmoor mental hospital in England, and then through his almost inexplicable release from incarceration back to the United States where tragedy inevitably strikes a second time and then a third; all the while, the authors follow a wider narrative path by describing how the great chemist Leo Baekeland invented Bake-lite, the first practical plastic, decades earlier, and how his own problems with his socialite wife repeated with his son George and then with his grandson Brooks, who married the beautiful Bostonian model Barbara Daly. As Brooks and Barbara race from Cadaques to Mallorca to London to Paris, hanging out with the moneyed European expatriate crowd (they numbered among their friends the writers James Jones and William Styron, the heiress Ethel Woodward de Croisset, and all kinds of minor princelings and society doyennes), their marriage begins to crumble... with their only child Tony being alternately smothered with attention and then neglected.
The suspense about what's going to happen as Tony's schizophrenic behavior keeps exploding rachets this oral biography even above more famous works such as Jean Stein and George Plimpton's EDIE and Plimpton's TRUMAN CAPOTE. Moreover, the kind of demimonde the Baekelands move through is absolutely fascinating, although the constant snobbishness, pretentiousness, and absolute refusal to take responsibility for anything among their circle begins to drive you to distraction after a good while. Most maddening of all is Brooks Baekeland himself, whose voice dominates more than any other this oral history (since of course of all the surviving characters he was closest to the epicenter), constantly excoriating his son for all the traits he himself exemplified: arrogance, dilettantism, and concupiscence. This book brings you into a heightened and fragile jetsetters' world you may have longed to see, but in then quickly makes you glad you were never a part of it.
Loved it! July 14, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I bought this book for beach reading, and was buried in it until the last page. I could not put it down. Contrary to what some have said, I found the format very easy to follow, and in fact very creatively composed. Just when you're scratching your head about something, it's answered in the next entry. Coincidentally, after reading through the first few pages, I came to find out that one of the main contributors used to be my landlady- not long after the book was originally published. I thought she was wacky back then, and now I realize that she was from a world far weirder than I could have ever imagined! This book is definitely a testament to the saying, truth is stranger than fiction.... MUCH stranger!
This is not a biography July 13, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
A biography is written by an author, a biographer. This is a compilation of transcribed interviews and letters. This book was not written, it was compiled. An amazing family tragedy, however the format of the book made it confusing, boring and frustrating to read. Oh if only Dominick Dunne had chosen to write about this family, a page turner it would have been. Don't waste your money.
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