What Remains by Carole Radziwill

I picked this book up in the bargain section of Barnes and Noble a while ago, and it sat on my shelf for a while more after that. When I bought it, it sounded like a moving story – Radziwill was the wife of Anthony Radziwill, Jackie O’s nephew, who died three weeks after John Kennedy Jr. After that, I kept thinking it might be too morbid, and I was afraid to read it.

When I finally picked it up again, I read it right after One Day, which centered on the date July 15^th. Ironically, this book centers on the next day, July 16^th, which is the day John Kennedy Jr.’s plane went down. But to say this is all it is about would be to limit it, and to put the focus too much on him; this is instead a loving portrait of his cousin, Anthony. I should say outright that I am not a huge Kennedy fan. Nothing against them, but just kind of oversaturated with all of them. I do however appreciate their place as an American sort of royalty, and, in this frame of mind, it is easy to feel a loss when reading this book.

What I was not prepared for was Carole’s hilarious family story. The outrageous stories of her family could fill up an entirely different, much happier book.

Since Anthony’s death was almost completely overshadowed by the deaths of John, Carolyn and Lauren, it is not surprising that I knew very little about Carole and Anthony. Had I heard more about her then, I probably would have liked them all better. After all, who could resist John Jr. asking his cousin, “Who would have thought we would have ended up with a couple of Caldor girls?” Carole, it turns out, grew up near here, in Suffern, NY. The places she worked (Caldor and Wendy’s in Ramsey) were all familiar. Carole met Anthony while working for ABC – having had a successful news career without the Kennedy name to help her. I was impressed while reading that she deliberately tried not to drop names, though, given her own career and the family she married into, this was probably not an easy task. Instead, she would refer to “Diane and Mike”, or “Joan and Pete”. I learned later they were Diane Sawyer and Mike Nichols, Joan Ganz Cooney (founder of Children’s Television Workshop) and Peter G. Peterson (former US Secretary of Commerce). I did find odd one reason she found John Jr. so charming — that, when he introduced himself, he said, “John Kennedy” and left off the “Jr”. Was there someone in his circle at that time who didn’t know him? I‘m pretty sure he didn’t need to add the last name.

So, I will not get into the marriage almost completely consumed by cancer, or the incredible sadness of that unexpected and unfortunate tragedy in the air. This offers a completely different perspective. Radziwill is not harsh – she is not dishing dirt here. Her portrait of the family is loving and respectful. She is not in their thrall, so she does not gush, except really about Carolyn Bessette, whom she apparently bonded with early on. She is the girl from the wrong side of town, who earned her place by taking on a heroic task. She married a person who was sure to die, and helped him live as much as possible in the short time of what remained.