Margot by Wendell Steavenson
Summary
It’s the mid-1950s and Margot Thornsen is growing up between a Park Avenue apartment in New York City and her family’s sumptuous Oyster Bay estate, as the presumed heir to her late grandfather’s steel fortune. Stuck in the mores and bores of WASP society with its cocktail parties and white-gloved galas, Margot is constantly rubbing against the strictures of her domineering mother, who never misses an opportunity to lecture her on the importance of marrying well. Meanwhile, Margot dreams of microscopes and beetles and books.
As she comes of age in the 1960s, a time of war and assassinations and riots, Margot’s path diverges and she finds herself in the expansive world of Radcliffe College, navigating a new age of sexual liberation, scientific discovery, acid trips, and rock ’n’ roll. The old rule book has been burned. There are no more limits. But now that she can choose, what does Margot really want?
Book Setting: New York City, Cambridge, MA
665 Park Avenue
The Chapin School
MetLife Building (formerly Pan Am Building)
Piping Rock Club
Park Avenue Armory
Lexington Candy Shop (formerly Lexington Diner)
The Ethel Walker School
The Colony Club
The Sherry-Netherland
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Widener Library
Marine Biological Laboratory
MBL Stony Beach
Washington Square Park
Mad House
Rockefeller Center
Museum of Comparative Zoology
Old Burial Ground
The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine
Sanders Theatre
The Charles Hotel
Reviews
"Unquestionably compelling...[and] extremely readable."
― Kirkus Reviews
“One of the most gifted and perceptive writers of her generation. She writes with elegance, grace, and authority.”
- Janine Di Giovanni