Beyond This Shore

Philadelphia/New York: J.B. Lippincott Company. Very Good+ in Very Good dj. 1942. 2nd impression. Hardcover. (price-clipped) [light shelfwear, previous owner's name in ink at top of front endpaper; the jacket is edgeworn, mostly along the top edge]. Autobiographical novel, a fictionalized follow-on to the author's 1940 memoir "Polish Profile," in which she told of her life as the wife of a Polish prince, living with her husband and children on his estate until they were forced to flee the Nazis in 1939. In the novelized version, obviously drawing on the same experience, she depicts "the conflict between the American and European way of life as (truncated) it is reflected in the marriage of a young American girl and a Polish diplomat," all against a backdrop of approaching war (the Anschluss in Vienna, the Nazi invasion of Poland). After later divorcing the Prince, she became well-known as a book reviewer and TV host/guest in New York, and caused something of a stir with her memoir "A Matter of Life and Death" (nominated for a National Book Award in 1962), in which she rather brutally dissected her very troubled relationship with her mother. She committed suicide on Christmas Eve of 1966. The author was once quoted, in reference to this book: "It stinks." But I say: you can be the judge of that! . (Inventory #: 17184)