We Used to Own the Bronx: Memoirs of a Former Debutante

In this self-indulgent memoir, journalist Pell recollects her privileged East Coast upbringing and her gradual break with the affluence and expectations of her dynastic clan. As a young woman, Pell rode horses, spent time at her grandparents' Tuxedo Park villa (""with two enormous round towers and a long, splendid living room that you stepped down into from a double stairway"") and shopped at Bergdorfs with relatives called Cooky, Pookie, Goody and Tinkie (Pell was nicknamed Topsy). Following her debut, Pell went to college ""to be interesting to my future husband and to pass the time until he showed up,"" and it wasn't until she graduated and moved to the West Coast that she escaped the overweening pressure to fill the family-standard ""snobbish foxhunting debutante"" mold. Her eventual transformation to black sheep, unfortunately, is too little too late. Though her luxurious childhood is marked by genuine emotional pain, alienation and confusion, most readers will have a hard time empathizing with her personal issues or her upper-class guilt, particularly in the present financial climate.