Once Upon A Secret

Okay, I know you are growing weary of my enthusiasms.

I am Toad, of Toad hall, gripped by each new sensation with eyes spinning like tops, sprawled on the road thinking, "What Have I been missing?"

First it was The Wire, then Downton Abbey, then Mad Men, and now it's Once Upon a Secret.

It's not (just) that this memoir by one of JFK's mistresses spins a fairy tale of the girl picked out of the litter by the King and swept along. Mimi Alford spins her web, giving just enough background about the events surrounding her affair, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the desegregation crisis at the University of Alabama, but she tells the tale of the hand maiden to the King who is also the consort.

She tells it from the point of view of a nearly seventy year old woman who is beyond embarrassment or need for fame or fortune and the voice is warm and tempered and she says she did sleep with another man's wife, and it never bothered her and she says why: It was clear she was no threat to the wife, that she enjoyed the sex, enjoyed the places sex with this powerful man took her, enjoyed the adventure and enjoyed being used. If she was a ruined woman, she was enjoying every minute of it.

It is remarkable how clearly she can articulate the thrill of having an affair with someone who you find so exciting, unattainable and attractive. Even now, she cannot see Dave Powers, whom some would call JFK's pimp, as anything other than a very nice man.

The most fascinating thing about her account is how it allows you to see something through someone else's eyes. Her values are so clear, as are the prevailing values of the time, both on stage and back stage.

This is a book which is rewarding on many levels. I was always a sucker for memoir, whether it's called a novel or an autobiography, whether it's The Bell Jar or A Farewell to Arms.

It does what really good literature can do--it gets you into someone else's head. So, if you are seeing things from the point of view of Stringer Bell, murder makes perfect sense. If you are seeing things from the point of view of Robert Fredricks, desertion from the army makes perfect sense. If you are Mimi Beardsley, having sex with the President during your summer internship and on weekends down from college seems entirely the right thing to do.

What is so wonderful about this book, at least as far as I've gotten into it, is even pushing 70, she can look back and say, "I was a lucky girl."