Primates of Park Avenue: A Memoir

I am annoyed at myself that I contributed money to this author by buying this book. I was in the airport and desperate for something to read, didn't have time to look at Amazon reviews - which I usually do before buying. If I had, I would have seen all the terrible reviews. I also paid full price. I'll spare you a read - there is nothing shocking or juicy in this book and nothing I didn't already know from watching a few episodes of Real Housewives of New York. She talks about how these Upper East Side mommies are size 00, work out like crazy, binge drink on weekends, spend a lot of money on clothes and botox and how hard it is to get a Birkin bag. Who didn't know all of this? Then oddly she goes off track and spends the last 1/4 of the book on an unexpected pregnancy that she contemplated aborting just because she didn't feel like having another baby! Then she miscarries and is trying to get sympathy!? She was so unlikable and wondered why none of the other mommies didn't want to be her friend. She blames her overspending on trying to "fit in". Please don't buy this book and give this woman any more money for her vapid lifestyle.

I like to listen to books on CD because it helps me to relax and fall asleep. Since I only read non-fiction, and my local library doesn't feel the need to stock many non-fiction books on CD, I listen to pretty much whatever happens to be on the non-fiction self. Some books are so boring that I give up after one disk. Some books are so enjoyable that I ration the disks to savor the story, like slowly eating a hot-fudge sundae to make it last longer. Then there are books like Primates of Park Avenue that I only finish because I can't make it to the library for a couple of weeks.

Twice in my life I have been plopped down alone into another culture and been forced to sink or swim, and eventually became a part of that culture. Because of this I love nothing better than a good culture-shock memoir. I had high hopes when I plucked this book from the shelf, but was disappointed early on. I kept waiting for the author to write on the religious/cultural aspect of her story, and what it felt like to be a Midwestern gentile plopped down into the world of super-rich urban Jews. She wrote hardly anything about this aspect. I think she used the word "Jewish" maybe three or four times in the entire book. I found this very frustrating. We do get a lot of information about monkeys and apes. I enjoy nature and wildlife books, but a nature study does not meld well with a memoir, unless the memoir is something like BORN FREE in which the entire story is about wildlife and nature.

Getting to the end of Primates of Park Avenue was like slogging through a swamp, and I was relieved when it was over. This is very intriguing material, and in the right hands it could have been a can't-put-it-down memoir. In this case I felt like the author could not rise to the challenge.

I am a mom in New York and was excited to have an easy beach read over the holidays. Besides the chapter on the Birkin, which was entertaining and an eye opener into the craziness of acquiring this extravagant handbag, I thought the rest of the book lacked depth a was completely self indulgent. For those readers that don't live in New York, I can see how this can be entertainment, but I skipped through the pages because it was boring and repetitive. I think Wednesday tried to write from an outsiders point of view but by going completely native, e.g. buying louboutins on a whim for a girls night in, doesn't make her seem any better than the rest of the women she wrote about.

If I wanted to read a textbook, I would read a textbook. I wanted a juicy, gossipy light read about the ridiculousness of the extremely wealthy... which is what most book reviews said this was. The people who wrote the reviews and the jacket blurbs obviously did NOT read the same book I read. Of the 300 or so pages in this book, probably 180 of them are just summaries from anthropology studies. This writer should stick to nonfiction or maybe choose another career.

I bumped into this book while researching information on best summer camps for my future have-not-conceived children (I'm Asian and no kidding), and I thought, these stereotypical obnoxious, uptight, type-A, materialistic upper east side mothers sound just like myself! So I had to read it and learn their dark little secrets of what to do and what not. To my greatest disappointment, one third into the book, all I have been experiencing is the insecurity of Wednesday Martin, so unsubtle that almost every sentence and every paragraph is screaming it, making it really hard to actually enjoy the stories what she was telling. The stories are not about an outsider who tried to understand or make sense of the "ridiculous but funny" life that those women run on the Upper East Side, as one of the mothers in the book called it; those stories are told from the author's perspective with an extreme sense of self-concisousness, a level of insecurity so strong that she's desperately trying to be accepted as "one of them" while trying to prove that she is not that much below them as readers think. During apartment hunting, she felt embarrassed because the agent thought she was a personal assistant, because "my casual 'nerdy hipster' Marc Jacob outfit". And this theme is throughout, whenever when she talks about what the other mothers do, regardless if is their shopping routines, fitness enthusiasm, or nannies/tutors/parenting. And you certainly think having a PHD in a liberal art field may help one with some confidence in life? Nope, think again!

A look into the lives of the jet-set mommies who live on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. Birkin bags, Hampton homes, fancy schools, snobby attitudes...this book reveals it all and more. Nothing too serious here (except in the last chapter or so) - amusing, silly, and enjoyable!

I usually buy books from Amazon and read the reviews first but I saw this book in a bookstore so I bought it without reading any reviews. This book is pathetic beyond belief and if people on the UES are really like this, they are all pathetic beyond belief.

Note to Wendy (aka Wednesday) who said:
"When you ask yourself why everyone in Manhattan, including you, wants a Birkin....." Let me tell you - everyone in Manhattan does not want a Birkin and quite frankly anyone who does leads a very sad life. FYI in case you think I'm just jealous of these UES moms - I live on the Upper West Side, am well off financially, very fit (bikram yoga) and spend my money with a non-profit in Africa.

I couldn't finish this book

In this rompy memoir, Wednesday Martin (a great name) brings us a glimpse into (are we allowed to say this?) largely the life of Manhattan Jewish finance wives. An aspiring writer with a serendipitous interest in anthropology she - at times bemused, other times incredulous - enters the lifestyle that to a Midwesterner like her might as well be on Mars. Everyone who has had the most minuscule exposure to Upper East Side (UES) is right to clutch their pearls in anticipation of fun.... because Wednesday does not disappoint. She eviscerates, with winking and excellent attention to the punch line, an endless, humorless, jockeying for status which starts before birth and ends long after one has entered She'ol. She probably had no idea what she was getting into when she married an insider (a NYC financier) but it was worth it - she's got the book deal and we get our laughs.

A few things jump out. First, it's (of course) about the money and access but, as far as UES wifeys are concerned, also about survival. We are talking relentless social combat on school selection, after-school activities, game dates for the brood (you want to arrange dates with high status kids and avoid mixing with low status families, because status as we all know is contagious), charities, trips to the Hamptons, mindless exercise etc. Clothing and (especially) accessories are scrutinized through the lens of their monetary worth. Relationships between couples, "friends", mothers themselves are likewise defined through the lens of financials and status. Social warfare percolates down to the netherworld of auxiliaries - clothing shoppers, maids, school administrators, salespeople, charity officials, real estate agents who happily collude with what to the ordinary (normal) person appears to be hell on Earth.

So whence the drug-taking, alcoholism, anxiety, endless trips to the psychiatrist? The reality is that the social equilibrium for an UES mom (pace Martin) is inherently unstable. With skills limited to charities, NGOs, uber-intellectual "proto-jobs" the lifestyle depends on the husband. His job loss or divorce get you kicked out of the tribe which, one supposes is not exactly conducive to Eros or friendship with possible rivals.

I was intrigued by the absence of nature, which differentiates this cohort of people from their WASP, West Coast and Southern equivalents. There is the pretension of intellect and art, vigorously exercised at charities, galas and openings. Everything is intensely cerebral, calculating and competitive in a constipated way. Even as you are hopping to Aspen, St. Barth or the Hamptons you never leave the E 82nd Street.

What comes out between the lines is the suffering experienced by these moms who don;t have (and perhaps don't want) many moments of tranquility and peace. They waste excellent education and resources which could be spent on professional accomplishment, on peripheral and largely meaningless status symbols. Somewhat incidentally, they are bringing into the world new generations of pampered princes & princesses who may get a degree from Princeton but are virtually guaranteed to be as emotionally constipated, and helplessly obsessed with wealth and status as their mom and dad. This insular world does not need the rest of us except as a resource that supports their parasitic lifestyle (we are talking about the 0.1% that has expanded the economy into unproductive financial speculation benefiting the few at the expense of the many). This, my friends, is anthropology in action even as tongue-in-cheek and amateurish as presented to us in PoPA. The Real Housewives from Upper East Side are convinced that they are deserving of the wealth channeled out of the productive economy through hedge funds, banks, law offices, private equity and similar rackets in what is (pace Piketty) essentially parasitic rent-making. Wednesday kind of acknowledges this as well, even as she gradually capitulates to the lifestyle. Flesh, after all... is too weak to resist the Birkin bag. One cannot help wondering what this primate merry-go-round does to a person's emotional-spiritual health. I guess Wednesday and her children will find out someday.

I too had to stop reading this book. It was horrible. I think a big part of my problem is that I can't relate at all to women like this, nor do I care one whit about all their stuff, or their insane lifestyles. That is all I'm saying about this group the author claims to observe, but in addition, I feel, really want to be a member of. My life is to short to waste on even 200 pages of this drivel, thank goodness I got it from the library and didn't waste a dime. Because, unlike Ms. Martin, I need to watch my pennies.

Well written