GRANDMRE: A Personal History of Eleanor Roosevelt

"Grandmère stood at the center of my childhood, and many of my fondest memories return to that idyllic time, a time that was private and intimate and in which she was simply my grandmother." Roosevelt shares these warm recollections of his grandmother Eleanor in a fond biography of a strong and resilient woman and a sweet grandmother. He remembers the bustle and excitement around Eleanor when he spent holidays at her beloved home, Val-Kill, in New York's Hudson Valley. While he renders the generally well-known facts of Eleanor's life, it is the personal touches, drawing on his own memories and those of other family members, that distinguish this account, for instance, her confiding in the author's Aunt Anna that "like all women of [the late Victorian] era, she was taught that sex was an ordeal to be borne" and that sex had been for Eleanor "an extremely difficult part of married life." There is, however, not as much of this personal insight as one would hope for. The book's strength may be in the pictures from family collections. Overall, this is a touching, human-size account of a woman who seemed larger than life. (Oct.)