1185 Park Avenue: A Memoir

by Anne Roiphe

In this captivating memoir, novelist Anne Roiphe shows us what it was really like to grow up rich and Jewish in New York in the 1940s and 1950s. Revisiting the world of her childhood, Roiphe brings alive a cast of characters who are both difficult to love and impossible to forget. Through the eyes of this precocious, loving daughter, we witness the brutalities that lurked behind the mah-jongg tables, cocktail parties, and summer houses of her family. By turns heartbreaking, funny, and mercilessly honest, Roiphe's story exposes the fault lines of misery that exploded in domestic battles on the home front, far overshadowing the war overseas.
The locus of the story is 1185 Park Avenue. It is one of the buildings on the northern end of the avenue -- just before the train tracks mark the beginning of Harlem -- that wealthy Jewish families claimed as their own in the first half of the 20th century. Amidst the maids and the governesses and the doormen and the psychiatrists live the members of the Roth family, in Apartment 8C. They include an unfaithful father who uses his wife's fortune to entertain other women and play cards at his club; a misfit son who won't eat his food because he believes his parents are trying to poison him; a disappointed mother who waits all day for her five o'clock scotch and her crossword puzzle; and an eager daughter who tries to negotiate peace at the dinner table. Bound by custom and greed, as well as love, they stay together until their world at 1185 Park has done its damage. Only the daughter escapes whole -- to become the writer we now know as Anne Roiphe.
1185 Park Avenue is both a history of an era and a portrait of the artist as a young woman. Roiphe makes it impossible for us to view the 1940s and 1950s with unabashed nostalgia or to think the same way about the people who were crushed by its lies and deceptions. Her redemption, though bittersweet, stands as a haunting triumph long after we have turned the last page of her compelling story.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, New York, Judaism

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Over a four-decade career, Roiphe has proven so prolific that the critic Sally Eckhoff observed, "tracing Anne Roiphe's career often feels like following somebody through a revolving door: the requirements of keeping the pace can be trying." (Eckhoff described the writer as "a free-thinking welter of contradictions, a never-say-die feminist who's absolutely nuts about children"). Roiphe published her first novel, Digging Out, in 1967. Her second, Up The Sandbox (1970), became a national best-seller and made the author's career.

Roiphe has since published seven novels and two memoirs, while contributing essays and reviews to The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, and others. In 1993, The New York Times described her as "a writer who has never toed a party line, feminist or otherwise." Her 1996 memoir Fruitful A memoir of Modem Motherhood was nominated for the National Book Award

From 1997 to 2002, she served as a columnist for The New York Observer. Her memoir Epilogue was published in 2008, and another memoir, Art and Madness, in 2011.

Reviews

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book interesting, because Roiphe's father sounds like a truly terrible human being, and yet she maintained contact with him until his death, always striving to please him and have some sort of closeness with him. Ultimately, I think this book is about Roiphe even more than it is about her parents, and even though her writing is beautiful and her upbringing is sad and fascinating, I'm not sure I like her. Yet I still want to read more of her. Pretty intriguing.

[Janet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Why is it that a memoir by a talented writer about her extremely wealthy, extremely dysfunctional family usually turns out to be an extremely addictive read? After two days of musing, I feel sorry for her parents and her brother. Yes they were self-absorbed and very limited people, and I know she does express some sympathy for them, but did it help anyone to have these relentlessly damning portraits of them out there?

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interestingly enough, read this memoir about growing up dysfunctional while spending Christmas with my family. How damned appropriate was that?! The parallels were astounding!

[Ann-marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know it was one of those books I kept reading even though I didn't like the people. It reads like a novel but it's memoir, honest, and really interesting.

[Laurel-Rain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Anne Roiphe explores the bonds of family and the tension of dysfunction that ultimately define the lives of those living at "1185 Park Avenue: A Memoir."

Her mother's money sets them up, while their father, dependent on it and upon the life it buys, displays his resentments in various ways. Anger, outbursts, disappearances--all could be described as symptoms of the symbiosis that ties them together.

Against this backdrop, the author and her brother, with whom she shares a difficult bond, grow to their adulthood, both fighting the connections they share while coming together frequently, almost as if the elasticity of the bonds is the strongest connection in their lives. Love/hate, push/pull--dysfunction at its most poignant follows them until, finally, the permanence of death changes the ties to memory and loss.

Roiphe's work is most memorable when she shares tidbits and insights about these original connections in our lives. Near the end of this book, she describes the relationship with her brother, who criticizes her frequently. "I was his sister. Who else had been there from the beginning, who else understood without saying, who would laugh at any joke, who would read the day's obituaries with him looking for friends of our parents who had at last bit the dust? Who else knew that his fair shake at this world wasn't so fair...."

The two of them were "witnesses to the same battles, children of the same parents, raised in the shadow of the Second World War before the winds of social change blew down on the country...."

No matter what kind of family we grow up in, the tie with siblings is one of those bonds that most closely approximate the strongest connections of our lives. Roiphe tells it better than any other writer I know.

As much as I could relate to some of the story, and as powerful as the words were, sometimes the journey was tedious and emotionally exhausting, which is why I chose to give this one four stars.

[Florence Buchholz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her childhood came alive for me. I wanted to know how it was living on Park Avenue.

[Sharry · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absorbing family saga that focuses on the family's time spent living at 1185 Park Avenue in New York City in the late 1940s and 50s. Anne Roiphe skilfully brings her story to life.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can literally see, feel, smell, hear this author's life as she grows up in NY. Very descriptive, interesting, insightful.

[Laura Boudreau · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is well-written and interesting, but pretty depressing with little to inspire.

[Gina Grecco · Rating 5 out of 5]

I find this to be a fascinating read by an extremely talented woman.
Am I the only one who didn't think her family was that much out of the ordinary? For a dysfunctional family, it was not that unusual for the time period.
I think she is giving a very honest account, but she does not appear to be unhappy.
Maybe because I read Epilogue, a later memoir, and followed how she ended up in a lasting, very
happy marriage. Upon consideration, I find that what I take away from this book is the truth of human resilience. Her childhood was difficult, but you can see how she carries on, and doesn't herself spiral into a depressed state. (At least not yet, at the halfway point of the book). Yes, her dad was a handful, and her mother depressed, yet I don't believe that she felt unloved by them. Children have a way of accepting their parents' shortcomings without vilifying them.
I learned a great deal in a general way about the upper classed in Manhattan, and not just the Jewish upper classes, but the intellectual elites. I have known people from this world, and I never understood their distance, regretful snobbery and lightly veiled insults at my being raised in California and attending public school. Now I get it. I guess when you are raised "up", you can't go down, even if it is a much happier, lighter place. I do not find her unlikeable, and I think she displays self-reflection mostly in her later memoir, but she reveals very honestly how she always sabotaged any attention or love that was coming to her little brother, even from his hired "father figure". Sad, but not her fault. There wasn't enough love to go around. I am glad that she ended up in a loving marriage. Overall, excellent read.

[Michele Minkoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was not quite the fast read it should have been - very wordy however interesting

[Jinjer]

the last surviving grand courtyard building on Park Avenue

[Janelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

very good. a sad jewish memoir

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would like to grade this book with three stars and a question mark. There was so much dysfunction and unhappiness it was cringeworthy. Money does not buy happiness and it can buy unhappiness. A sad childhood where parents were self-absorbed the children vied for attention. And not many of the people involved were even likeable. Still it was a look at the life of rich Jewish families from the 30s forward and the people who married money and hated their partners for being rich.

Roiphe writes very well, reporting without emotion although she reports emotions. She is blunt about her own actions and motivations and is probably less forgiving of herself than of anyone else.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very disturbing memoir reminding readers that no one knows what goes on in families except the people who are living through the experiences. In the early 1940s the United States was involved in World War II, but there was a totally different war underway in Apartment 8C of 1185 Park Avenue. While the outside world saw a wealthy, stable, respectable Jewish family, inside the apartment the parents were locked in a constant struggle and the author's brother was convinced that his mother and father were trying to poison him. Anne's mother was lonely, insecure, unfulfilled, and self-absorbed while her father escaped the family through both his violent rages and his constant philandering. Anne ultimately escapes by marrying early and badly and by retreating into the writer's lifestyle. Warning: do not read this book after dark or on a dark and stormy day. Wait until the sun is shining and after reading it rejoice in the strength and resilience of the human spirit.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sad memoir by a writer who grew up not to far from where I did, a decade before me. An account of the lostness of a generation of secularizing New York Jews, with their psychoanalysis, music lessons, and cultural pretensions.

Well-written if a bit pretentious in style. Evoked places and types I knew. I'm glad I don't live with these people any more.

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author grew up in 1930s Manhattan as a privileged child, with nannies, cooks and servants. Yet her father was abusive and married "up" for money, her mother was ineffectual as a mother, often taking to her bed, and her little brother was mean and a loner, cutting off all possibilities of getting close to anyone. The book is a real testament to the saying, "Money can't buy happiness."

[Tamara Bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

(my pprbck copy was the advance reader's copy, so was 15 pgs less & had the hardcover picture.)
a painful memoir with such pitiful, self-absorbed parents. heartbreaking b/c the author did not view them that way. told in a factual way instead of the usual 'poor me' style. that was probably the main reason it was so sad. no happy ending either, at least not in the way a reader usually hopes for.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memoir of the author growing up as a wealthy jew on...you guessed it, Park Avenue, during the 1930's. Painful in how her family is dysfunctional and, while most of it focuses on her youth, you see as she ages that things never "get right," but still worth a read.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her parents were bound to each other in a union of mutual dislike. he couldn't live without her money and she couldn't face life alone. The abuse and misery overwhelmed the money and privileges of life on Park Avenue among the wealthy. I was fascinated by the story and the writing.

[Judy Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I thought the characterizations of her parents and brother were somewhat overblown, to fit the poor little rich girl persona she created, overall I loved the arc of this book. It was a bittersweet memoir with enough richness of detail to evoke the period well.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written book by a highly talented author. Satisfying read about growing up on Park Avenue.

[Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sad little memoir, this. Don't read if on anti-depressants.

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sad story about a very dysfunctional family. It really bothered me that she never confronted her father -- just kept coming back for more of his abuse.

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book started off well but then just died and stopped in the middle. I kept waiting for something to happen right up until the last page.....

[Dereka · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really fascinating book. Beautifully written. I have never read anything by her before but I am intending to do so now.

[Jude]

A Jewish family that escaped Germany and live in NYC during WW2, verrry interesting. Highly recommend.

[Annette · Rating 4 out of 5]

What life was like for a child who appeared to be part of a well-to-do family, at a time when well-to-do was not very rich.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memoir by the always wonderful Anne Roiphe, about growing up Jewish in Manhattan. I recommend anything she has written, fiction or nonfiction.

[Kelly Wischmeier · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was interesting. She had a different style of writing. She wrote short sentences. The reading was choppy. I think it was part of her style. It did not flow well. Still good, though.