Wendy Burden is the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of "The Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt. In this memoir she details growing up in an über wealthy family of alcoholics, drug addicts, and other dysfunctional people. The family is rife with suicides, divorce, and other types of mayhem. Burden's own father committed suicide when she was six and she and her siblings were told nothing about it. Her mother entered into subsequent disastrous relationships as Wendy and her brothers were shifted from house to house and school to school, often living with the grandparents, their spoiled and annoying dogs, and a mass of foreign servants. Wendy copes by developing a fascination with the macabre and emulating Wednesday Addams while trying to avoid her mother as much as possible.
This is a rather dreary account of one faction of the Vanderbilts. I had hoped it would be more all-encompassing and include the other branches of the family but they aren't even mentioned. There aren't even any photos other than the ones on the cover which are not explained anywhere in the book.
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