Review by Booklist Review
Due to her father's mental-health difficulties, Wohl's parents were advised not to have children. They had eight, including Wohl's much younger sister, Edie Sedgwick. Famous for her beauty, mod style, extravagance, and daring cinematic collaborations with Andy Warhol in the mid-1960s, Edie was the epitome of hip big-city glamour. Yet their branch of the blueblood Sedgwick clan lived on a big ranch in central California, where everyone rode horses, worked cattle, and navigated her father's harsh demands. Edie was spoiled and traumatized, developing bulimia, enduring hospitalizations, becoming dependent on pills, and tragically dying of an overdose at age 28 in 1971. Wohl also mourns for two brothers, one who died by suicide, the other in a motorcycle accident. in this sensitive, deeply considered chronicle, Wohl offers a fresh and incisive look at Edie's headline-grabbing adventures with Warhol, her superstar power, and their symbiotic relationship while also musing on Warhol's prescient anticipation of our obsession with images. As for her sister, Wohl avers, "What Edie wanted, always, was to experience life with the greatest intensity, and she had no regard for danger."
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Wohl--translator and older sister of downtown New York City art world habitué Edie Sedgwick--debuts with a perceptive account of her sibling's life. Born in 1931, Wohl grew up on isolated Santa Barbara--area ranches as the oldest of eight children, all brought up by extremely controlling parents. In response to Edie's shock at catching their father having an affair in 1957, he "called the doctor and said she was crazy; the doctor came and put her to bed and shot her full of tranquilizers." Edie was in tumult, argues Wohl, long before she met Andy Warhol or entered the wild world of the mid-1960s that ended in her 1971 death by a drug overdose. Wohl barely saw Edie during her Warhol years, and in an attempt to piece together "what she had that I so totally failed to see, but that he saw and put to such effective use," traces her meteoric rise and positions her as a precursor to today's social media influencers, though only at Warhol's doing, as it wasn't "in Edie's nature." Striking photos help tell the story, and Wohl's exhaustive examination of her sister's vulnerability and star appeal give this a unique position among the many books on the Warhol scene. The result is a thoughtful exploration of a tumultuous life. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
A biography/memoir of actress and model Edie Sedgwick (1943--71), one of the superstars of Andy Warhol's art films. Wohl (one of Sedgwick's sisters) speculates on the way a young Edie was impacted by their upbringing, by an abrasive father on the family's isolated Southern California ranch. But the book's first section is only peripherally about Edie; there's more focus on the large, wealthy, and dysfunctional family she was born into. This book also shows how Sedgwick's and Warhol's lives intersected for an intense period of time. In fact, Wohl's hyper-focus on Edie's time in New York with Warhol seems a little tedious but does offer a perspective on how groundbreaking Warhol was and how Sedgwick was involved in his art making. Wohl concludes with thoughts from others about how influential and evocative Edie was. VERDICT This is a good recommendation for those who like to read about family dynasties, the mid-century modern New York art world, or people who have a lasting fifteen minutes of fame.--Amanda Ray
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A scholar and translator attempts to unravel the mystery of her sister Edie Sedgwick (1943-1971). In a memoir addressed to her brother, who died in 1965, Wohl (b. 1931) recounts her attempt, over more than 50 years, to understand her sister Edie, who in the mid-1960s, burst onto Manhattan's cultural scene, "a fantasy image of upper-class glamour," as Andy Warhol's companion and muse. "I'm trying to figure out exactly what happened when Edie got together with Andy," writes the author. "I want to know what she had that I so totally failed to see, but that he saw and put to such effective use." Their unabashed self-promotion, Wohl asserts, "led to the present that we are all living out"--dominated by selfies, influencers, and relentless seekers of instant celebrity. Wohl was the oldest of eight children; Edie was the seventh. They were privileged but also isolated, raised on a ranch and tyrannized by their parents' "despotic" rules. At boarding school when Edie was a child, Wohl saw only glimpses of the girl she portrays as demanding, headstrong, and often spoiled. Unlike her siblings, Edie's tantrums got her whatever she wanted, and the author partly blames the family's insularity on Edie's appeal. When she arrived in New York in 1964, she appeared transcendent: "beautiful, unattached, and eager for life. She was also unimaginably innocent because literally everything was new to her." She was beautiful, to be sure, and so vain about her appearance that she spent hours putting on makeup. "Severely bulimic" and an addict, she already had spent months in psychiatric hospitals. Wohl is not just interested in examining Edie as a cultural icon; she also seeks to expose their family's dark side: her father, mentally unstable, narcissistic, and philandering; her mother, devoted to protecting him even after Edie accused him of molesting her. One brother killed himself, and Wohl was estranged for years. Edie, it turns out, was not the family's only victim. An absorbing portrait of troubled lives. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
