Savage Grace

by Natalie Robins, Stephen M.L. Aronson

Drawing on private diaries, confidential documents, and interviews, the authors relate the tragic ordeal of the Baekelands, a jet set family torn apart by love triangles, incest, matricide, black magic, drugs, and suicide

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Crime, Biography, History, Biography Memoir, Mental Health

492 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1985

About the author

Natalie Robins has published nine books, four of which are volumes of poetry published by the legendary Alan Swallow Press. Her first nonfiction book, Savage Grace, coauthored with Steven M.L. Aronson, won an Edgar Award for the best fact-based crime book published in 1985, and was made into a movie starring Julianne Moore. Alien Ink: The FBI's War on Freedom of Expression was the winner of the 1992 Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award, as well as a New York Times "Notable Book of 1992." Sherwin B.Nuland, MD called The Girl Who Died Twice: The Libby Zion Case and the Hidden Hazards of Hospitals, published in 1995, a book that "will bring new reportorial and literary standards to its genre." Copeland’s Cure: Homeopathy and the War between Conventional and Alternative Medicine, was published in 2005. The Washington Post called it “an absolutely dazzling account.” Robins, also the author of Living in the Lightning, which won the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's 1999 Chairman's Citation Award, lives in Riverdale, the Bronx, New York, with her husband, the writer Christopher Lehmann-Haupt. They have two grown children. She is working on a biography of the literary and social critic Diana Trilling, to be published in 2015.

- from her website

Reviews

[George Ilsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truth is stranger than fiction, it is often said, and this account of a wealthy family's mad trip into murder and incest is indeed strange.

The movie version (starring Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne as the mother/son combo) is well done, filthy and delicious, but seemingly so over-the-top as to be unbelievable. If anything, the book is more shocking, because it is more detailed.

Highly recommended for voyeurs and true-crime fans (if indeed those are two separate categories).

Normally, I try to shun movie tie-in covers, but this one is an exception.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrJB4...

[Maryann MJS1228 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book when it originally came out. I was in high school and like many teenagers I was prepared to see parents as the source of most teenage troubles. After reading this book, I promptly wrote my parents a nice letter about what swell people they were. I was that grateful not to have had Brooks and Barbara Baekeland for parents.

This is the rare book that proved even better than I remembered when I reread it last month. It starts with the murder of Barbara Baekeland by her son then goes back in time to beginnings of the Baekeland fortune through the passionate but ill-fated marriage of Brooks and Barbara until it catches up with the murder and the sad denouement of Tony's life. As one reviewer here has noted, this is not a traditional narrative but an oral history. The transcripts of interviews are presented without comment - very much like Jean Stein's great Edie and Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil - and the speakers reveal far more about themselves than any narrative could.

If there is a villain in this story, for me it wasn't Tony Baekeland, who clearly suffered from serious mental illness but his father Brooks Baekeland. Rarely have I come across a character in fiction or nonfiction who made me want to slap him so hard or so often. Early on one former friend of the Baekelands' talks about wanting to kill Brooks in the street with a brick. By the end of the book you may, like me, find this to be a perfectly reasonable response because Brooks is a piece of work. In fact, he's a complete jerk. If I'd been Tony's lawyer I'd have used the fact that Tony had the opportunity to kill his father yet didn't as Exhibit A in the fact that Tony was insane. Whether he's yammering on about how much he was like his brilliant grandfather, complaining about the fact that Tony couldn't stick with anything (this from a writer who only managed to write one short story and didn't finish his PhD!) or basically abandoning Tony after he's released from Broadmoor, Brooks Baekeland is a loathsome individual. His blatant homophobia and sheer lack of compassion will take your breath away. Other characters come across as clueless or careless but Brooks is downright diabolical in his self-absorption.

As an evocation of a time, a certain type of ultra-privileged couple (the sort with artistic pretensions but little talent or commitment) and a mind boggling selfishness, Savage Grace is a book to read and reread. It's suited for True Crime and biography fans. As noted, if you don't like oral histories you probably won't like it - there is very little narrative holding the interviews together. When the author wants to describe Riker's Island, she presents her description as an interview, for example. If you enjoy hearing the story from the mouths of those who lived it, Savage Grace is a book you won't soon forget.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading SAVAGE GRACE is like rubbernecking a 16 limousine pile up on the road en route to the Hamptons--you really want to get a good look inside to see if anyone rich and/or famous is inside the wreckage, you feel ashamed for wanting to see elite blood and guts spilled and yet you can't drive on! Robins' usuage of multiple interviews and research materials (published articles, stories, novels, lectures as well as letters and diaries) gives the reader a continually tantalizing view of a world they otherwise would never glimpse and perhaps is the only way the story could be told since so little of it could be related by conventional reportage and there is little in concrete evidence. Though it seems to reveal and conceal its subject matter almost simulatenously, its "told first hand" stance gives the it the ring of truth (whether it is or not) and gives the reader much more insight to the players that a straightforward journalistic report would. Also, it grounds the reader in the story's circumstances and largely explains the participants' actions. Yes, it does get a bit repetitive in the middle and about 2/3 of the way through but the last one hundred and fifty pages are practically relentless. Can't wait to see the movie!

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow. usually i don't read "true crime" but this one caught my eye. it tells the story of the baekland family - descendants of the man who invented bakelite, one of the first plastics. which means they were mondo rich. they hung out with the likes of jim jones, andy warhol and many other famous writers of the times. the story is told in an oral history style, which lends itself well to the tragic tale, which involves a murder.
i read this book in, like, 2 days. it took over my life. apparently there is a movie coming out about it soon.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is composed entirely of comments made by other rich and famous people about the family, their activities and relationships, and the murder and attempted murder. The comments not only tell the story, but also are telling in themselves about the world of the wealthy and privileged and the skewed way each participant in this painstakingly slowly unfolding tragedy sees themselves and the world. All are co-conspirators. None have a clue. Hard to read and kind of boring in a tragic way. But a compelling story. I guess the adage "The rich are different from you and I" is demonstrated.

[Lynda Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew of this story from many moons back and just recently a podcast, They Walk Among Us, did an episode on it and referred to this book. I couldn't find it online then spotted an hardback copy for sale so bought that. It's a big old book.
I just love the way it has been put together, in that the authors clearly conducted a whole series of interviews and then plucked bits from each and put passages into chronological order. It made it easy reading and I really enjoyed the concept. But these people....they're mainly arty types but so many of them sounded as bonkers as both Barbara and Tony both clearly were !! And upon getting his release sorted from Broadmoor and after what then ensued not one held their hands up or regretted a thing. The glories of being rich, I suppose.....accept sod all blame for anything !!
It certainly shows us that money can't buy you happiness or guarantee sanity. The thing for me appeared to be that they were so bored. All they did was travel here, there and everywhere, totally rootless, and just party, party, party. Tony never had routine in his life nor worked a day in his life, following on from his idle father's example. I can understand why so many rich people these days choose to cut their kids off. I think it makes good sense and encourages them to get off their backsides and actually make something useful of their spoiled lives. A friend called Sue Railey had it spot on when she wrote, of Tony, "I felt that he never had a chance-perhaps his father really didn't bother enough about him and his mother bothered too much." I loved the story of Barbara's dress made of feathers related by Steven M.L. Aronson, one of the authors.
Barbara's friend Gloria Jones made me laugh aloud when she uttered, post-murder, "I think you ought to know that she probably aggravated Tony"......so, that's OK, then !! Goodness knows what the Scotland Yard detectives thought of that !! I was gratified to read that we used to imprison illegal immigrants back in the 70s.....so not sure when that changed, but a pity it did !!
There were hardly any mistakes as is the case in the properly printed word.....a few apostrophe errors and saww not saw was written but that was it. It's certainly never the case in e-books....they're usually full of mistakes. Sadly I have no more space to buy proper books these days, or I would, because the digital format is often a proper disappointment !
I'd certainly recommend this to any self-respecting true-crime buff. A real eye-opener.

[Melinda Borie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a WILD ride, start to finish, and not for the reasons I expected. The twisted tragedy of Barbara and Tony Baekeland-- a glamorous, dramatic woman and the troubled son who loved and killed her-- is set against a larger backdrop of completely amoral high society. Every interview has a stunning detail that drew me up short, but it was more the bored, contemptuous tone with which their friends and acquaintances spoke of them that really shocked me. For example: a few chapters in, the man who sold Barbara the apartment in which she died stops talking about what he knew of their characters and the crime to go deep on a criticism of Barbara's decorating taste, which was evidently more interesting and ghoulish to him than her murder. Additionally, every word out of Brooks Baekeland's mouth made me hate him more. I wish he had a Wikipedia page I could vandalize (don't do this) to best express my rage at him. Were his attitudes and actions connected to the murder? No, probably not, but it doesn't stop him from emerging as a particularly pathetic sort of villain, especially since neither Barbara nor Tony were alive to incriminate themselves when this book was written.

All in all, an excellent, if unconventional, true crime book, one I'm sorry to see got a sensationalized movie treatment. The book walks a fine line of reporting the rumors surrounding the Baekelands without coming down too strong on which ones its authors believe to be true-- did Barbara begin an incestuous affair in an attempt to cure Tony's homosexuality? Was Tony's father's new wife Tony's girlfriend first?-- and it feels more respectful of these complicated people than a shot of Julianne Moore in bed with Eddie Redmayne and Hugh Dancy (that's right, this movie had real celebrities in it, two of whom have gone on to win Oscars) could ever be.

[Chana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Isn't it ironic that the man who delivered a lecture at Johns Hopkins and said,
"What is the outlook for the next generations? Is it not time to put less pride in the increasing number of our populations, and to look more into the matter of quality? It is quite right that we should try to restrain the immigration of undesirables. But shall we continue forever to encourage the promiscuous breeding of the unfit, degenerates, criminals, and the insane, while keeping on ignoring the biological facts of heredity? If so, more unemployables, more hospitals, lunatic asylums, poorhouses and prisons."
should have a great grandson who was a paranoid schizophrenic who committed murder and spent years in an asylum and eventually committed suicide?
No one in the Baekeland family seemed to be capable of a stable home life and long-term loving relationships. Barbara seemed manic and needy to me, coming to pieces totally when Brooks left her. She was just pitiful and Tony was completely affected as well. Tony was a shattered human being and I guess there were many causes including a very mixed-up and degraded sexuality, years of drug abuse, an unstable home life that was jet-setting everywhere and living nowhere, violence and pretentious good manners, constant parties and name-dropping. He probably had a genetic propensity for his mental illness as well. The whole story was very sad, especially his release from Broadmoor and subsequent desertion in New York. No one would give him the time of day. Where were all those people who had worked for his release? The consequence of living with all those pictures of his mother, the whole thing had such a tragic inevitability. Too, too sad.

[Jody · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book deserved more than 3 stars at times, but mostly I was forcing myself to continue. Another reviewer mentioned that the last third of the book was worth it so I hung in there and found this to be true. In general, though, I just couldn't catch the flow of the writing as it was set up. It's in a format that consists of snippets, letters and oral histories from so many different sources that it was hard for me to read in a coherent fashion, let alone remember who all these people were. I wish the cast of characters were listed in the front. I had no idea there was a list at the end. It would have helped greatly had I checked. Nonetheless, I think I'm a 'linear' reader.

Despite that, the actual events that transpire in the 'high society' world that the Baeklands inhabit is shocking. Tony Baekland is the disturbed son of flamboyant Barbara and emotionally detached Brooks Baekland, who are all well known due to their famous lineage. Brooks's great grandfather was the inventor of Bakelite plastics and amassed quite a fortune.

After small-town girl Barbara Daly marries Brooks Baekland,she finds her passion in gathering together as many literary figures, famous people, royalty, and anyone else part of the 'it' crowd. From William Styron to Dali, Barbara lives to give parties, go to parties, name drop and do it all over again the next day. Her charm was well known as was her beauty and eccentricity. Brooks seems to be her complete opposite in many respects. When Tony is born, the stage is set for tragedy.

I do want to see this movie and hope that it well surpasses the book's jolty ride.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Huge thanks to viv@well for sending this original hardback edition across the pond. This is now a major feature film (scripted by our revered mutual friend Howard A Rodman!) and about to go on general release, so reading up the source material first seemed a must. Norman Mailer calls this the best oral history since Edie, and he's right. This is a brilliant portrait of transatlantic jet-set life and a grey evocation of the inevitable psychological complications of social clambering. Insecurity, jealousy, lust and money - it's all here, and so are the beautiful European backdrops and the society soirees; the culture clashes and the family ties; the grief, deception and greed and the final horrid twist. This is a world of imbalanced love: Too hot versus much too cold. The voices are so telling, as with any good oral history. A brilliant and challenging edit, and due for re-release this year apparently.

[Gayle Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

From my collection.
I enjoyed this true crime book, but the style was just a little off-putting. I like a narrative style better than this collection of quotes.
I finished the book feeling somewhat sorry for Tony Baekeland. He was born into a seriously stange family and most likely had some serious mental disease as well. His drug problem didn't help. Of course, on top of all that his mother did everything she could to mess him up. What a creep! It's hard to believe he was ever released, though, after murdering his mother and his obviously messed up mental state. I agree with another poster in that I wonder where all those people were who fought so hard for his release. They seemed to have dropped out of his life after getting him back out into the unsuspecting streets. It was really wrong of them to put the burden on his poor grandma!

[Margie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to look up the definitions of tawdry and sordid to make sure I got it right. I'm going with sordid and ugly. Readable, but sordid and ugly. The style (relying heavily on interviews, articles, and court documents) works well to unfold the story.

[Isabella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of comments, testimonials and interpretations from family friends, a little confusing...
I liked the last part of the book...dramatic, complex and interesting, considering the mother's point of view...tragic
Another exception... the film is powerful with great performances... from the actors!

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know why I keep buying books like this. Well, I know WHY (rich people with problems are so fascinating, aren't they?), but maybe I can't justify it anymore. It's starting to feel too voyeuristic.

Anyway, the "characters" in this book are a real piece of work. The book follows a clear timeline, but has no real over-arching narrative; it's all told through quotations and personal letters and official documents. I think a clear narrative voice would have been useful, though - if for no other reason than to remind the reader of "who's who" (the number of friends and family members being quoted in the book is pretty large and I got several people mixed up over and over again). Still, letting everyone speak for themselves was pretty eye-opening, especially in the case of the father (who insisted that he wasn't interested in "society" life in the least, but was probably the biggest name-dropping snob of them all).

This book was just made into a movie, with Julianne Moore as the mother - I think I'll have to check it out.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who doesn't love a sordid tale of wealthy privileged people behaving badly? It's why I can never turn away when Real Housewives is on. I'm paraphrasing a review here on Goodreads that likens reading Savage Grace to "rubbernecking a sixteen-limousine pile-up." Yes. Exactly--but add in the moments of bizarre and terrible and accidental poetry (literally anything Brooks says, HOW IS HE REAL?!), the truly bananas excerpts from everybody's literary exploits, AND the salacious end of the whole rigmarole and oh my god, YES, I will be rereading this with popcorn next time.

Truly incredible. I was really looking forward to freeing up the shelf-space of finishing this, but nope--it has earned a place in my library forever.

[P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most satisfying true crime account I've read, because it's made up of statements from a staggeringly wide range of friends, family, psychiatrists, etc., and letters from the time period. It's more like a portrait of the family's life. Mostly when I read true crime there's sort of an inevitability hanging over and informing the narration, but here everyone contradicts everyone else, including themselves, on little or big details, and I still don't know whether I think that it could have been prevented or it could only have been prevented by Antony having been born into an entirely different family.

[b e a c h g o t h · Rating 1 out of 5]

The reason this is a one star from me is because:
THIS COULD HAVE BEEN SO GOOD.
*SPOLIERS*
It’s a fricking GOLD MINE of a story, a secretly incestual wealthy AF family exposed when the son murders their mother after years of abuse.
Like, if Emma Cline wrote this it would be the best book I’ve ever read.
Instead it’s a weird collection of statements, letters, interviews, and letters. So disjointed, repetitive and not at all well put together (how someone says something and how you should write it are very different things)
GRrrr. This irritates me because it had such a good foundation.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, interesting but at different times, difficult to read. I understand the movie is coming out soon, so I'll see it. Talk about the lack of parenting? The father is absent, the mother? Don't even want to try to figure her out. All in all, this was a disaster waiting to happen and yes, I do put a lot of blame on the father, seems he never cared one way or another and left the son to raise himself and be with an insane mother. Still, interesting.

[Linda Aull · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm having a non-fiction moment and I picked this up at Barnes & Noble.

The story of the family that gave the world Bakelite is disturbing on lots of levels, but the nearly epistolary style made it an interesting read. Told from the perspective of many interested parties, this story of a son who kills his mother left me slightly sickened. However, well worth the read.

[Joanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting format, but I'm glad to be done with it. What a pack of name dropping, self absorbed freak shows. The kid never had a chance. I am looking askance at my Bakelite jewelry collection.

[Suzanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

this was ok. but not my type of book.

[Paul Gaya Ochieng Simeon Juma · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was pregnant with joy the day I bought this book.

[Aubrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

As we all know by now, I'm a huge true crime fan. But this book - this entire tragedy - was a really, really tough pill to swallow. 

I was already fairly familiar with the story of the Baekelands, and finding this book on Kindle Unlimited seemed a fortuitous read. But honestly, it was incredibly gossipy, rumour-filled, and often times salacious. It read more like a scandal sheet than it did a true crime.

But honestly, I can't fault the authors for that - they were, seemingly, repeating primary sources. Mainly, interviews with those known to the family involved. And for the most part, they were all a privileged, hoity-toity, insufferable bunch. The tone they take is so over the top, it borders on absurdity. It's hard to believe people spoke this way outside of Hollywood film noire. If I didn't know this was a real crime that had occurred, I'd think this was sensationalist fiction made as satire.
That being said, it's pretty clear that the perception of Tony was that he was crafted by his parents. He was molded. He was fabricated to act in certain ways and enjoy certain things. He never really had a chance to develop his own personality, because his parents would manipulate it out of him. But his parents had such opposing views of who - and what - Tony should be that he didn't stand a damn chance at being happy, let alone having semblance of stability, either within his own mental health, or in his home.

And of course, this leads to the tragedy of Tony killing his mother. (Honestly, I'd say he killed his abuser.) 

I'm hesitant to speak too much on the actual subject matter of the book - the murder of Barbara Daly Baekeland - due to the incredible rumours that surround her comportment, her behaviour, and her relationship with her son. I don't want to feed rumour fodder. However, it is without a doubt that Tony, though seemingly adored by his parents, was merely a tool for them to bolster their own egos. He was treated as an object to be admired when required, and otherwise to be put away for the next performance. Tony didn't stand a chance at normalcy. 

And that, in my opinion, is the true tragedy in all of this. 

[Madison Grace · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was on my to-read list for seven years, and all I can say is that I’m disappointed. This is a story full of scandal and tragedy told through the most vapid, half-informed voices possible. If this book had been edited to a third of its length, it’d still be too padded. I’d love to have read a more objective, narrative-style book about this case, but the oral history format doesn’t serve this story at all. Everyone offering opinions is vain, out of touch, and usually has nothing worth saying in the first place. I’d complain that it’s not a fitting tribute to Barbara and Tony Baekland, either, but my sympathies don’t go far for them, so it’s not worth complaining about. What a mess — this book itself and the subjects. If you ever needed proof that wealth is a curse, here it is.

[Charles Reimler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wealthy People Persona MASK OK, But Pathological
Hidden Miserable Real Lives! Son Murder Of His Mother Was Hatred Due Her Absolutely Abuse Plus Incest! Sad Story Mental Illnesses Be Both Mother & Son, And An Unloving Parent Father Into Disaster! Money Is Not A Cure All For Everything! Books Author Needs Improvements 3-Star, But Book Itself True Story Makes Reality Stranger Than Fiction! Parents Ate Jacked Up & So Are Their Kid!

[Jackie Jameson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The way this novel is put together is really impressive. The whole book is a collection of correspondence between and about the Bakelyte family, going into the past family history and the Grandfather’s invention of Bakelite. It all starts out just a hot mess of a narcissistic family that just devolves into freaky chaos. The amazing thing is not that the son killed his mother; the amazing thing is that he didn’t do it sooner. Great piece of history.

[Joe Schiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wowowow, what an incredible read. I read this book after watching the movie and it was a great choice. It added more color to the story and, in a way, picked up where the movie left off.

The story of this family is absolutely crazy and dramatic and tragic. It’s a great, generational trauma.

I also really enjoyed the conversations by all of these incredibly wealthy, incredibly out of touch people.

Robins does an exceptional job with the editing. It’s adds to the drama and narrative.

[Amy Kaltenrieder · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a waste of time. Very long, very repetitive only to reveal a few angles of a dysfunctional family and their relationships. The structure of using letters and communications from all the characters to tell the story was intriguing but again too repetitive. The reveal at the end was not worth the wait.

[Allegria · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Truth is stranger than fiction' and it certainly is in this family's case. Bored and well connected family living off inherited fortune, moving from country to country unable to settle. Easy to step out of reality and normality through a lack of commitment to each other. Very sad lives and so unnecessary.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is comprised of letters, reports, and observations from family members and friends of the Barbara Baekeland and her son Tony. It gives the book and very choppy feeling ad drags the story out.