Savage Grace reviewed on London Grip...

Described by Norman Mailer as “the best oral history to come out since Edie”, this true crime story put together in the 1980s by astute editors Natalie Robins and Steven M. L. Aronson captured the public’s imagination for its compelling portrait of the lifestyle of a classic American couple of a certain time and place; a mannered, highbrow-ish couple living the American Dream, all dinners and society affairs, with their Manhattan townhouse and their Spanish summer homes.  It is a fascinating tale because the couple in the story are far from average Joes. In fact, let’s go further and say the triple, since the couple and their son all figure as prominently in this compellingly awful tale.

First published in 1985, it captured American public attention chiefly because of the mighty fall aspect of the Baekeland family story. Typically revered for the monied aspects of their lifestyle, their position also went in tandem with the kind of local envy and resentment that propitiated the schadenfreude accompanying the family’s splendidly grotesque fall from grace.