Ask Not:  The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed by Maureen Callahan is HEAVY.

Maureen has a YouTube channel called The Nerve, and I do enjoy it.  I like her wit and her strong opinions about people she dislikes.  It’s fun to hear her command of the English language peppered with swears, her long stare-into-the-camera pauses and the way her anger is mixed with plenty of laughter.

I can only watch her in small doses, though, as I do get fed up with the idea of a person making a living by talking about how other people choose to live their lives.  It’s quite a bit of complaining.  And yet, I was curious about her writing style.  I knew she would find a way to allow her personality to shine through the dense material and overall, it would be a good use of my time.  I did, after all, grow up in a house with a reliquary in the kitchen that contained family icons next to Jesus along with a framed picture of JFK.

I spent three days reading her narrative on these Kennedy women (which includes extensive research, a full bibliography and index in the back of the book).   I didn’t like the vastly negative experiences in this biographical collection but I was also compelled to  continue, because I heard her voice as I was reading.  It was a weird thing.  Maybe I was like the Kennedy women, trapped in a promise to myself or whatever.

Maureen skips around with dates and time then reels us back in to tie it all together, and with a Jackie O tear-jerking finale.  The opening chapter delves into Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and that whole shit show then transitions into Jacqueline Kennedy (later Onassis).  She touches upon Marilyn Monroe’s dalliances but there was nothing there that I didn’t already know.

I learned about other wives and girlfriends, and also murder and rape victims, as well as the various teenage White House staffers circa 1960.

The book made me feel physically ill.  I have a headache thinking about it.  I think Maureen’s point is that the men are to blame for the ruin of these women, but, truly, I don’t agree with that assessment.  It suggests things happen to you not through you.  You are in charge of your reality.  There are always better options.

I don’t understand people (women) who make connections with men for the purposes of money and power.  These women got abused mentally and physically then either got very sick and died or killed themselves.  Drugs and alcohol were prominent vehicles here, as though this is/was a perfectly acceptable and common solution.  The recklessness, the entitlement and promiscuity of the men was major yuck-yuck, and for the women, their decision to believe that their looks were a strong enough commodity to keep their men happy was delusional.  None of them were loved!

I felt like I’d been taken hostage by this book and tortured, as though I was feeling all the feels, the pain, the abuse instead of being the detached voyeur.  Maybe because these were real people and I was tapping into their residual energies?  Most of the women have passed away, some are still alive but, following extensive therapy have moved on (two are living off the money obtained from their book deals) – I am sorry they lived through all this darkness.  It was all so messy.

Maureen Callahan is a brilliant writer.  Read it and weep because there is no joy.  I’m going to go and play with my cat now.  I need to reconnect with happiness.