American Duchess, A Novel of Consuelo Vanderbilt, by Karen harper
After reading Therese Fowler’s “A Well-Behaved Woman”, about Alma Vanderbilt, Consuelo’s overbearing mother, I eagerly awaited reading this book, which I hoped would fill in the spaces on the life of Consuelo.
Overall, I got the impression that Consuelo was immature, but since she was married in her teens, it was to be expected. Brought up with all the class money could buy, I found her to often be shallow and selfish, taking advantage of her station in life, without fully appreciating it. However, she was shown to mature in some ways, and in adulthood she was depicted as a genuinely philanthropic and compassionate woman interested in elevating women to a position more equal to that of men and in aiding those less fortunate than she was. Yet often, she spent her money with abandon when it could have been used to promote higher ideals.
Both are imagined books, billed as historic fiction, about the lives of two women who were not only successful, but who were benevolent and charitable, and who played a role in the history of the women’s movement. Both of them were interested in suffrage and equal rights. Both were interested in the care and protection of women and children, of those less fortunate, who were, in their time, very much under the thumb of the men in their lives, living in a male dominated world. Both of the women were strong-willed and intelligent, single-minded and perseverant.
The writing style is simplistic and often juvenile, giving it the aura of a romance novel, designed for the Young Adult genre, more than historic fiction designed for the adult reader. It often felt shallow as it talked about ghosts and decorating and gardening without offering evidence of more substantial life events, that would made me feel the information was, in fact, legitimate and the book, authentic.
That said, it is a story which is engaging, at times, charming at times, informative occasionally, if not truly revealing. It offers a history of the time, about the class distinction, the culture and the wars, but the overriding theme for me was the concentration on the love affairs and marriage difficulties, rather than any new information on Consuelo, her life or her mother’s. In fact, the two books, this and the one by Fowler, are quite different in approach and interpretation of events, which I had not anticipated. I did enjoy the tidbits about Winston Churchill, but I have no idea which of them are accurate, and which of them are imagined.
I did enjoy the book since it was an easy read, the words flowed smoothly, but it never seemed to fully grow up, and neither did Consuelo. As a matter of fact, although decades passed, she always seemed like a young girl. The book offered a smattering of the history, but never fully developed into a novel which informed me about Consuelo, but rather it dealt with the general history of the time of her life, which is rather well known. There were wars and an economic depression, followed by a time of prosperity, many of us still enjoy, although women are still demanding more rights than they have been able to achieve.
In Fowler’s book, the main theme seemed to be the grooming of Consuelo to be a wife and aristocrat, to marry well and be protected in a way that women had not been before. In this book, Alma’s control over Consuelo seems more important than the intent or underlying reasons for the authoritarianism. I never felt fully invested in the book or the characters.

if you like historical fiction you will like this book. Of course hard to tell how much is truth, its based on history and is a very likable story.