Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
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Jackie 007?
You'd better believe it in Jack's Widow, a work of fiction that imagines the late first lady's life after her husband's assassination.
Once widowed, Jackie is asked by the CIA to discreetly welcome foreign visitors to her home to gather personal information on them that could be useful in Cold War espionage.
On second thought, please don't believe this tripe. The trouble with books such as this, as with movies that take on historical events and then say "just suppose ... ," is that the casual reader or viewer just might start to believe she is reading/seeing the truth.
And this book is laced with enough facts about Jackie and John F. Kennedy (his infidelities, the Marilyn Monroe connection; the national shock over her marriage to Greek shipping mogul Aristotle Onassis) that the reader starts to think it's all true.
Author Eve Pollard, who also wrote a Jackie bio, has a few clunky phrases early on ("how could she forget the moments when she had held the innards of the man she had loved").
But once she gets her story going, the action moves, and you find yourself sucked in despite yourself.
The author is especially harsh on Kennedy, giving him little credit for his contributions as president and all the bashing in the world for his extramarital exploits. The Kennedy family reportedly is upset with this novel, as well they should be. The late president is portrayed as a satyr, supported by a staff of pals and underlings who help him cover his tracks with the first lady. Pollard adds the lovely detail that the 35th president had chlamydia.
Why take real people who have been a source of inspiration for millions and debase them for the purpose of "entertainment"? Jack's Widow elicits the same queasy sensation as reading a supermarket tabloid.
Jack's Widow
By Eve Pollard
HarperCollins, 288 pp. $24.95
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