"Them"

In the 1920s, I believe, Eugene Zamiatin wrote "We", a satire on Soviet life that has only recently been released in Russia, although it was immediately translated into English and other languages.

Whether or not Francine du Plessix Gray chose "Them" as the title of her biography of her mother, Tatiana du Plessix and her step father, Alexander Liberman, in deference to Zamiatin, I do not know.

But the story Gray tells is equally fascinating.

Both Tatiana and Alex were from Russia. Titiana from an old family, whose members included some extraordinary over achievers, and she herself the young lover of Russian revolutionary poet, Mayakovsky. Alex from a Russian Jewish family (actually he was 3/4 Jewish and 1/4 Gypsy), who also included over achievers, including his own father, who was one of the architects of Lenin's New Economic Policy.

Both had discombobulated childhoods, with fascinating mixtures of wonderful and terrible experiences. Both had been married before (and in fact Tatiana was married still when they met, and Gray already born (she is now 75), but her husband died in a plane crash when he was flying to London to meet up with de Gaul and the Free French.

They were separated when the Germans invaded France, barely made it out of Europe and wound up in New York. (Interestingly, both of their fathers had come to America years before, to lead very different lives from their lives in Europe.

In New York, Tatiana and Alex became a power couple. She became New York's premier ladies' hat designer, at a time when all women wore hats. She worked first at Henri Bendel, and then for decades at Sacks Fifth Avenue. Her customers included the cream of society and of the entertainment world.

He was both an artist (and in fact a world class sculptor), and for almost five decades worked at Conde Nast publications, a company that he ran for much of that time. Conde Nast published many important magazines, 'Vogue' became perhaps alwasy no. one.

So they were a "must meet" couple for people who wanted to meet other talented, wealthy, ambitious and publicity seeking people.

They raised their daughter/step daughter often as an afterthought to their professional and social lives, but enabled her to meet the biggest names not only in New York, but in the world. It seems that every day their upper east side brownstone was the site of an important social gathering.

Yet with all of this, these two were an weird as can be, and grew weirder with age. The book is fascinating. She follows the lives of her parents, her grandparents, and her extended family, both in Europe and in this country. She ends with her mother's death at 85 after she had become addicted to alcohol and pain medication, and her stepfather's, also at 85 (but 7 years after her mother died) following his marriage to Tatiana's Philippino nurse and the absolute, immediate and total change of his lifestyle.

Francine Gray's family and mine bear absolutely no resemblance to each other. None.