Rating: 
Summary: Faery Child
Review: The oral history form is perfect for "Edie" little-girl-lost, who streaked across the '60's horizon like a falling star. Despite her grace, fragile beauty and charisma; Edie Sedgewick was almost born to be doomed even before the drugs did her in.She was born into a wealthy old family that had a history of instability. Her father, also breathtakingly beautiful, had crushing psychological problems. Two of her brothers committed suicide. Her mother was ineffectual with her large brood. She was raised on an isolated ranch with her seven siblings with almost no contact with the outside world. When she hit Cambridge at 18, she was pathetically ill equipped to be in the larger world. I couldn't agree more that she found herself in the midst of horribly decadent people. Andy Warhol gets a particularly bad rap in this book, but to me, he was no better nor worse than his hangers-on, just a shade more self-absorbed. What really saddened me was that I don't think it really mattered who Edie took up with. She was destined to spin out of control. She had no focus, no inner strength, and was dangerously self-centered and delusionary. "Edie" is compelling reading whether or not you have experienced the '60's. It is good to keep in mind that Edie herself and the contributors to the book all were a part of a very small stratum that whistled through this confusing decade. They were no more representative of the rank and file than Emmerin is representative of this decade. Such a lovely child, such a terrible waste.
Rating:
Summary: Stein shows us the brutal truth of American life.
Review: The story of Edie Sedgwick is a refreshing eye-opener of the reality that, to the outside world, the ideal American family is not so ideal on the inside. With well-written honesty, Stein guides us through a life that was inspiring, fast-paced, short-lived and yet too amazing to be forgotten thirty years later. Stein brings to us a sense of how we want to see, or do see a piece of ourselves in Edie. A work of art in sea of confusion and change, we now know why she is remembered as an icon rather that an addict.
Rating:
Summary: The 60's " with her fog, her amphetamine, and her pearls".
Review: This amazing book shows some of the less constructive aspects of Andy Warhol's at times manipulative pop guises. However, it gives us a glimpse of an American woman struggling to come to grips with the "melting" of traditional gender and class roles. Rather than being a case story in the damage that drugs cause, Edie Sedgewick's life seems to be a very vivid depiction of overly punitive drug laws. Edie seems to have suffered from undiagnosed ADD and Tourette's Syndrom (TS). Rather than being pesecuted by her family for her abuse of amphetamine (as Stein's book horrifcly demonstrates), Edie should have been on a comfortable dose of d-amphetamine and a tricylic anti-depressant with some Clonidine. Stein's book gives us an example of why we need a more "poetic psychiatry".
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