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?

 
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Book Setting: New York City, Cambridge, MA

  1. 665 Park Avenue

  2. The Chapin School

  3. MetLife Building (formerly Pan Am Building)

  4. Piping Rock Club

  5. Park Avenue Armory

  6. Lexington Candy Shop (formerly Lexington Diner)

  7. The Ethel Walker School

  8. The Colony Club

  9. The Sherry-Netherland

  10. Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study

  11. Widener Library

  12. Marine Biological Laboratory

  13. MBL Stony Beach

  14. Washington Square Park

  15. Mad House

  16. Rockefeller Center

  17. Museum of Comparative Zoology

  18. Old Burial Ground

  19. The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine

  20. Sanders Theatre

  21. 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