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The Poison Tree: A Memoir
Growing up in his father’s looming shadow, Henry I. Schvey wondered if he was doomed to repeat the past, doomed to make the same mistakes his father made. Would he succumb to the drive for domination and transform his own world into one colored by fear, domestic violence, infidelity, and spousal abuse? Schvey grew up in New York as his father rose to the pinnacle of success in the Reagan era of dog-eat-dog global finance, eventually becoming Vice-President and Chairman of the Bond Funds Division at Merrill Lynch. But his father’s success was paid for with the currency of intimidation and he wore it with the braggadocio of a man with an outsized ego who didn’t care who he stepped on to get to the top—including his son.
The Poison Tree is a study of Schvey’s relationship to his father, an illumination of the secret life of a man who was powerful, highly respected, and greatly feared, and a journey—both sad and tragicomic—that ultimately leads to forgiveness.
The Poison Tree is a study of Schvey’s relationship to his father, an illumination of the secret life of a man who was powerful, highly respected, and greatly feared, and a journey—both sad and tragicomic—that ultimately leads to forgiveness.
300 pages, Paperback
Published September 5, 2016
27 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 7, 2016
The Poison Tree is a memoir by Henry Schvey documenting his turbulent relationship with his difficult, cruel father. Schvey tells of growing up in New York under his powerful father's shadow, of experiencing the effects of his parents' abusive marriage and, consequently, his difficulty in forging a true loving bond with either of his parents, even in adulthood. As he states,
"The worst part was how I transformed myself back into my father’s son. No matter where we were, I reverted to a frightened little boy in his presence."
All in all, a good read. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.
"The worst part was how I transformed myself back into my father’s son. No matter where we were, I reverted to a frightened little boy in his presence."
All in all, a good read. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.
August 9, 2016
An incredibly raw and poignant look at a young man growing up in Manhattan in the 1950s and his turbulent relationship with his narcissistic father and in-denial mother. Longing both to be loved and escape from them, Schvey paints a vivid picture that is honestly told and tenderly felt, with just the right dose of dry wit. This is a beautiful true story of pain and darkness that ultimately is overturned by love and light. Highly recommended!
August 22, 2016
<<Mr. Rothstein had said: "Hear the voice of the Bard!" Why had he said that to me? Someday I might write something that would live on, even if whatever I wrote would be less incomprehensible that William Blake's. >>
Well Mr. Schvey, in my humble opinion, you sure wrote something that will live on, and you did a hell of a nice job!! Let me tell you that I enjoyed this tremendously and I am glad you took your pen and put on paper your adventures, your experiences, your emotions, your life.
I find I really enjoy reading memoirs of people who would be considered 'not famous'. Most of the time they are so rich, so full of meaning and emotions and lessons, if you want. They teach us that life has meaning no matter how famous or rich you are, that you have a legacy worth knowing.
The book fits perfectly in the mould of a bildungsroman, a coming of age story:
“It was me, furtive and insecure, poised awkwardly in between the boy I was, and the something else I might one day become. In a few strokes, he managed to capture who I was at that moment, at the cusp between adolescence and manhood.”
I think this is another perfect example of how no matter your shortcomings, all the barriers thrown in your way, you can still make something of yourself. Sometime it just takes one person to believe in you, to see you inner spark in order to set you on the right track. Mr. Rothstein is Schvey's mentor, even if it turns out he wasn't the best of role models – it just shows us how bad and good are always interconnected, how the hand that did so much damage can also sow a sea of good.
Yet forming a person, a person's character is such a complex matter. Every one and everything that touches your life in a way or another adds a bit to you as a person and yet you get to a stage when you must decide what you'll do with everything that you learn through your experiences, what you'll do with your emotional baggage. It is never too late to change or to make a difference!
Mr. Schvey comes from a rich yet dysfunctional family. He gets his fair share of emotional and physical abuse yet it is enough for him to see a simple family enjoying the quality time of being together, taking pride in their accomplishments and being grateful for each small thing life has to offer to understand that “Perhaps family could be more than a poison tree.”
The most striking characteristic of Schvey's family is madness. From the mother that considers cleanliness unnecessary and prefer to close herself from life and especially from her kids while declaiming Shakespeare at every turn; to the abusive and cruel father and to the grandparents. Each and everyone of them seems to have some seed of madness ingrained in their personality. [As a side note: I think the portrait of the father and a bit the paternal grandfather as well are stereotypical; you know the image of the financial Jew sucking blood from his victims. But with the book being a memoir I could only conclude they are examples of the model on which the stereotype was based.]
A roller-coaster of emotional images/scenes, like his time with Lee or the tennis incident and culminating with the gorgeous image of the apple's skin:
“Even eating an apple with Gramps was magic. He peeled an apple without ever breaking the skin – not once. I watched the skin of the apple curl like a snake sunning itself, slowly wrapping around into a circle in the ashtray alongside one of his big cigars. [...] .But no matter how hard I concentrated, my peel always broke, usually four or five times on a single apple. Even so, when he put the pieces of mu skin in the ashtray alongside his, my failed attempts looked like baby snakes curled up beside their grandfather. “
The book is also full of the 50's – 60's New York; the start of the hippy movement, Vietnam War with all the students fighting against it; repressed sexuality – so Jewish, if I can use such a cliché; and a lot of hilarious scenes, some when I even laughed out loud.
My favorite character was Grandma Schvey. She was absolutely hilarious in her craziness and I see her as a very important person in Henry's life. In a twisted, mad way she was one of the few family members to really make a difference in the author's life. Schvey's uses a gentle brush to paint her, but he also manages to make light of all her sufferings and her complexity, her underling positivity and willingness to see the seed of goodness where others can only see evilness. And here you have a “a taste” of Grandma Schvey:
“OH MYGOD, OG MY GOD, IT'S HIM! WAKE UP, HARRY! HAAAARY!-HE'S ON THE PHONE! WHO? HENRY, THAT'S WHO! Where are you calling from? New Hampshire? HE'S CALLING FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE! I'm gonna have a stroke! What's he doing to me? How did you get here? By BUS? YOU TOOK THE GREYHOUND BUS ALL BY YOURSELF? Don't you know Stanley, my nephew, he took the bus at night and was mugged and ended up in the hospital; they said he had BRAIN DAMAGE!”
“Stanley has brain damage, Grandma! I didn't know - “
“No, they think he's okay now, but is that what you want for yourself? It serves you right! You think our kind of people take the Greyhound bus at night? Only Goyim! You think the Jews survived Dachau and godknowswhere so you could ride the Greyhound to New Hampshire in the middle of the night? Do you? There are all kinds of sick, deranged people on buses. […]”
“ Grandma, listen. Please, calm down. I'm fine. Really. Fine. I just wanted to talk to you and Grandpa.”
“He just wanted to talk...so he rode all the way up to New Hampshire by Greyhound in the middle of the night – to talk! They don't have phones, anymore, at your mother's?”
Instead of conclusion:
They say: “the apple doesn't fall far from the tree”, yet you can show them otherwise. I believe it is a very powerful message and in the same time very personal to me, as it's the thing I promised to myself long before I become a parent: “I will be nothing like my father(and my mother in certain aspects)”. So far I did great, I accomplished what I set for myself and so can you!
“You think I'm crying because I love him -I'm not! I'm crying because he never said he loved me, and now – it's too late.” [...]The deep sadness of that simple fact appalls me beyond words. […]
As the child grips my hand, her warm fingers send a thrill through my body.
“I love you, Natasha.”
“I love you too, Daddy.” So simple, so easy.
*book from Netgalley. Thank you Amphorae Publishing Group for your generosity!
Well Mr. Schvey, in my humble opinion, you sure wrote something that will live on, and you did a hell of a nice job!! Let me tell you that I enjoyed this tremendously and I am glad you took your pen and put on paper your adventures, your experiences, your emotions, your life.
I find I really enjoy reading memoirs of people who would be considered 'not famous'. Most of the time they are so rich, so full of meaning and emotions and lessons, if you want. They teach us that life has meaning no matter how famous or rich you are, that you have a legacy worth knowing.
The book fits perfectly in the mould of a bildungsroman, a coming of age story:
“It was me, furtive and insecure, poised awkwardly in between the boy I was, and the something else I might one day become. In a few strokes, he managed to capture who I was at that moment, at the cusp between adolescence and manhood.”
I think this is another perfect example of how no matter your shortcomings, all the barriers thrown in your way, you can still make something of yourself. Sometime it just takes one person to believe in you, to see you inner spark in order to set you on the right track. Mr. Rothstein is Schvey's mentor, even if it turns out he wasn't the best of role models – it just shows us how bad and good are always interconnected, how the hand that did so much damage can also sow a sea of good.
Yet forming a person, a person's character is such a complex matter. Every one and everything that touches your life in a way or another adds a bit to you as a person and yet you get to a stage when you must decide what you'll do with everything that you learn through your experiences, what you'll do with your emotional baggage. It is never too late to change or to make a difference!
Mr. Schvey comes from a rich yet dysfunctional family. He gets his fair share of emotional and physical abuse yet it is enough for him to see a simple family enjoying the quality time of being together, taking pride in their accomplishments and being grateful for each small thing life has to offer to understand that “Perhaps family could be more than a poison tree.”
The most striking characteristic of Schvey's family is madness. From the mother that considers cleanliness unnecessary and prefer to close herself from life and especially from her kids while declaiming Shakespeare at every turn; to the abusive and cruel father and to the grandparents. Each and everyone of them seems to have some seed of madness ingrained in their personality. [As a side note: I think the portrait of the father and a bit the paternal grandfather as well are stereotypical; you know the image of the financial Jew sucking blood from his victims. But with the book being a memoir I could only conclude they are examples of the model on which the stereotype was based.]
A roller-coaster of emotional images/scenes, like his time with Lee or the tennis incident and culminating with the gorgeous image of the apple's skin:
“Even eating an apple with Gramps was magic. He peeled an apple without ever breaking the skin – not once. I watched the skin of the apple curl like a snake sunning itself, slowly wrapping around into a circle in the ashtray alongside one of his big cigars. [...] .But no matter how hard I concentrated, my peel always broke, usually four or five times on a single apple. Even so, when he put the pieces of mu skin in the ashtray alongside his, my failed attempts looked like baby snakes curled up beside their grandfather. “
The book is also full of the 50's – 60's New York; the start of the hippy movement, Vietnam War with all the students fighting against it; repressed sexuality – so Jewish, if I can use such a cliché; and a lot of hilarious scenes, some when I even laughed out loud.
My favorite character was Grandma Schvey. She was absolutely hilarious in her craziness and I see her as a very important person in Henry's life. In a twisted, mad way she was one of the few family members to really make a difference in the author's life. Schvey's uses a gentle brush to paint her, but he also manages to make light of all her sufferings and her complexity, her underling positivity and willingness to see the seed of goodness where others can only see evilness. And here you have a “a taste” of Grandma Schvey:
“OH MYGOD, OG MY GOD, IT'S HIM! WAKE UP, HARRY! HAAAARY!-HE'S ON THE PHONE! WHO? HENRY, THAT'S WHO! Where are you calling from? New Hampshire? HE'S CALLING FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE! I'm gonna have a stroke! What's he doing to me? How did you get here? By BUS? YOU TOOK THE GREYHOUND BUS ALL BY YOURSELF? Don't you know Stanley, my nephew, he took the bus at night and was mugged and ended up in the hospital; they said he had BRAIN DAMAGE!”
“Stanley has brain damage, Grandma! I didn't know - “
“No, they think he's okay now, but is that what you want for yourself? It serves you right! You think our kind of people take the Greyhound bus at night? Only Goyim! You think the Jews survived Dachau and godknowswhere so you could ride the Greyhound to New Hampshire in the middle of the night? Do you? There are all kinds of sick, deranged people on buses. […]”
“ Grandma, listen. Please, calm down. I'm fine. Really. Fine. I just wanted to talk to you and Grandpa.”
“He just wanted to talk...so he rode all the way up to New Hampshire by Greyhound in the middle of the night – to talk! They don't have phones, anymore, at your mother's?”
Instead of conclusion:
They say: “the apple doesn't fall far from the tree”, yet you can show them otherwise. I believe it is a very powerful message and in the same time very personal to me, as it's the thing I promised to myself long before I become a parent: “I will be nothing like my father(and my mother in certain aspects)”. So far I did great, I accomplished what I set for myself and so can you!
“You think I'm crying because I love him -I'm not! I'm crying because he never said he loved me, and now – it's too late.” [...]The deep sadness of that simple fact appalls me beyond words. […]
As the child grips my hand, her warm fingers send a thrill through my body.
“I love you, Natasha.”
“I love you too, Daddy.” So simple, so easy.
*book from Netgalley. Thank you Amphorae Publishing Group for your generosity!
August 12, 2017
Well, I really raced through that one, didn't I? Why did I even start this memoir? I didn't know who this man was before I read a book review in the St. Louis Post Dispatch. So the proximity of his living just across the river might have something to do with it I suppose. What amazed me was that this man could have emerged from that horror show of a family. Good thing his grandmothers were at least caring. But that father...... Henry somehow manages to find and realize a really loving woman with a really loving family; but the road before would not have indicated he would be so fortunate.
I'm sharing this with my sister in law who is a memoir maven. I need to talk to someone about this book.
I'm sharing this with my sister in law who is a memoir maven. I need to talk to someone about this book.
September 30, 2016
The Poison Tree – A Memoir by Henry I Schvey
3 Stars
The impact of a dysfunctional family on generations.
After Henry Schvey graduated and received a PhD in Comparative Literature he decided to move with his wife Patty to teach at the Leiden University. He receives news that his father, Norman, is in hospital. Henry aware that his father has lymphoma cancer, decides to return to the States to visit him. He finds his father still as cantankerous as ever. After a very short visit to him in the hospital Henry is sent off to find his father’s address book. As he searches for this address book that seems to be of more importance in Norman’s life than Henry’s visit, memories of his childhood come flooding back.
Both parents came from wealthy Jewish families. Mother Rita Lerner Schvey had a Masters’ Degree in Education. One would think that this degree would have made her a more amenable mother to Henry, but it didn’t; younger brother Bobby was her favourite and she would always make sure that Henry knew this, especially after Norman had left the marital home. If the tension in the house was fraught while he still lived there, his leaving seemed to change Rita from a sweet, carefree soul into an alcoholic with serious hoarding issues.
Norman made it clear that of the two sons, he tolerated Henry more than Bobby. Life before Norman divorced his mother meant the sounds of fights or worse - Rita being beaten by Norman and then after the break-up, left with the feeling that he needed to become the adult in the family to try to restore some order – even if this meant only removing the empty tins piled high on the grand piano!
Henry’s relationship with his father was not much better thanks to the hidings often dished out by Norman using his belt and being referred to as the “son of a bitch”, (his father would never lose an opportunity to degrade both his mother and her family).
The one stable influence in his life was his grandparents. Their homes were where he found some stability and comfort.
One friendship had a profound influence on his teenage years. His friend ,Adar, shortly after meeting Henry said “I know you are far more than the sum of the inferior people who gave you birth”. Adar was an artist and great follower of Ayn Rand’s philosophy. This excited Henry and he started adapting this philosophy to his life, much to the derision of his father.
I hope that by writing this memoir of his very dysfunctional family, Henry has found the peace that he seems to crave. It seems that his wife Patty’s influence and having his own children has certainly helped, but I am left wondering why he has made his past so public. Is it to give hope to some teenagers going through tough dysfunctional relationships with their parents with the message that no matter how many lemons life throws at you, you can change them into lemonade?
I think my main criticism of the book is this; as someone who has never heard of Professor Henry Schvey, do I really care that he came out of this family and has gone on to achieve great things in his life?
I have another question; both his parents passed years ago, why write this memoir now? Why not just leave what they both managed to achieve in their lifetimes (Norman was hugely influential on Wall Street and retired from Merrill Lynch as Chairman of their Unit Investment Trusts division) and his mother Rita, well into her sixties, returned to university to obtain her doctorate. Both have left behind legacies of great achievements; why now, after all these years, tell the world what kind of monsters they appeared to their son?
Treebeard
Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.
3 Stars
The impact of a dysfunctional family on generations.
After Henry Schvey graduated and received a PhD in Comparative Literature he decided to move with his wife Patty to teach at the Leiden University. He receives news that his father, Norman, is in hospital. Henry aware that his father has lymphoma cancer, decides to return to the States to visit him. He finds his father still as cantankerous as ever. After a very short visit to him in the hospital Henry is sent off to find his father’s address book. As he searches for this address book that seems to be of more importance in Norman’s life than Henry’s visit, memories of his childhood come flooding back.
Both parents came from wealthy Jewish families. Mother Rita Lerner Schvey had a Masters’ Degree in Education. One would think that this degree would have made her a more amenable mother to Henry, but it didn’t; younger brother Bobby was her favourite and she would always make sure that Henry knew this, especially after Norman had left the marital home. If the tension in the house was fraught while he still lived there, his leaving seemed to change Rita from a sweet, carefree soul into an alcoholic with serious hoarding issues.
Norman made it clear that of the two sons, he tolerated Henry more than Bobby. Life before Norman divorced his mother meant the sounds of fights or worse - Rita being beaten by Norman and then after the break-up, left with the feeling that he needed to become the adult in the family to try to restore some order – even if this meant only removing the empty tins piled high on the grand piano!
Henry’s relationship with his father was not much better thanks to the hidings often dished out by Norman using his belt and being referred to as the “son of a bitch”, (his father would never lose an opportunity to degrade both his mother and her family).
The one stable influence in his life was his grandparents. Their homes were where he found some stability and comfort.
One friendship had a profound influence on his teenage years. His friend ,Adar, shortly after meeting Henry said “I know you are far more than the sum of the inferior people who gave you birth”. Adar was an artist and great follower of Ayn Rand’s philosophy. This excited Henry and he started adapting this philosophy to his life, much to the derision of his father.
I hope that by writing this memoir of his very dysfunctional family, Henry has found the peace that he seems to crave. It seems that his wife Patty’s influence and having his own children has certainly helped, but I am left wondering why he has made his past so public. Is it to give hope to some teenagers going through tough dysfunctional relationships with their parents with the message that no matter how many lemons life throws at you, you can change them into lemonade?
I think my main criticism of the book is this; as someone who has never heard of Professor Henry Schvey, do I really care that he came out of this family and has gone on to achieve great things in his life?
I have another question; both his parents passed years ago, why write this memoir now? Why not just leave what they both managed to achieve in their lifetimes (Norman was hugely influential on Wall Street and retired from Merrill Lynch as Chairman of their Unit Investment Trusts division) and his mother Rita, well into her sixties, returned to university to obtain her doctorate. Both have left behind legacies of great achievements; why now, after all these years, tell the world what kind of monsters they appeared to their son?
Treebeard
Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.
August 9, 2016
A sort of Angela's Ashes set in the Mad Men era of Manhattan, The Poison Tree is a poignant and beautifully written memoir. Simultaneously humorous and heart-wrenching, irreverent and inspiring- I couldn't put it down. A fantastic and engrossing read.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews