a longer look at this book can be found at my online reading journal here.

I took a chance and read this book knowing absolutely nothing about the subject. I got lucky -- this is a book about an interesting but incredibly flawed woman (1901-1968) who grew up in a sort of odd and not-always-healthy relationship with her father after the death of her mother at age 12. Her dad, known as "the Judge", came to depend on Henrietta for emotional support even through his three marriages. This strange sort of interdependence between father and daughter had a beyond-huge effect on Henrietta's life, a point that the author returns to time and again throughout the book. As one reviewer puts it, she became "an emotional surrogate" for the Judge's "adored dead wife" even through his two marriages, right up to the time of his death.

Henrietta's story is compelling -- from her romantic affair with her English professor Mina Kirstein at Smith at the age of 21 until her death in 1968. Emily Bingham has done an amazing amount of research about her great-aunt; sadly, information about her later life is rather lacking in terms of documentation. She takes us slowly through Henrietta's life as she charmed and romanced members of the Bloomsbury set in 1920s London, started a long-term course of psychoanalysis with Ernest Jones to "cure" her of her homosexual tendencies. As it turned out, Jones became someone in whom Henrietta could confide about the "seductive ambivalence" toward the Judge, which ultimately would add to her emotional and mental burden. Readers become privy to her various affairs with both men and women, her desire not to constantly be at her father's beck and call so that she could have some measure of freedom, her unflagging support of her father when he became FDR's pre-WWII Ambassador to Britain, and then her life, at least what's known about it through the Judge's death and beyond.

While I loved the subject and while I was cliche-ingly glued to this book, there were times when I kind of did the odd eyeroll or two over the author's writing -- very minor quibbles, to be sure, but still a bit annoying. However, the things that make this such an intense and compelling novel -- Henrietta herself, her family's history, her ongoing desire for the freedom to be who she wanted to be and the obstacles that so often got in the way, as well as her later tragedies -- far outweigh my niggles with the occasional writing issues, making for one hell of a good book. Highly Recommended. ( )