nonfiction

CAMERA GIRL The Coming of Age of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy

Anthony, Carl Sferrazza Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (400 pp.)

$29.99 | May 2, 2023

9781982141875

A uniquely focused portrait of the former first lady before Camelot.

Prior to her marriage to John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier (1929-1994) was an ambitious journalist and photographer, a remarkable period of her life captured in this engaging coming-of-age biography. Anthony, a former speechwriter for Nancy Reagan who has written several historical books about first ladies, digs deep into what her life was like before she became a public figure herself. He mines Bouvier’s “Inquiring Camera Girl” column, which she produced for the Washington TimesHerald from 1951 to 1953, for connections to her private life and examples of what her journalistic process was like. “Instead of asking ladies at luncheons, for example, ‘What do you think of Dior’s spring fashion line?’ she waited on a street corner for truck drivers to stop at a red light and shouted out the question,” writes Anthony. “Other times she poked at what might lie beneath the surface of those with strongly defined personas, asking circus clowns, ‘Does your smiling face hide a broken heart?’ and ‘Are you funny at home?’ ” Drawing on Bouvier’s letters and interviews, Anthony pulls together a compelling portrait of a young woman facing both the problems of her time and timeless issues. Should she focus on her career or getting married? How can she be respectful to her problematic parents while still declaring her own adult independence? When she met then-Congressman John F. Kennedy and his family, her conflicts became more emotional, especially as she broke off an engagement and dealt with Kennedy’s presidential ambitions and unorthodox courting style as well as his much-documented extramarital relationships. The fact that the book ends when Bouvier is 24 and marries Kennedy shows how impressive her early accomplishments really were.

A well-crafted biography that could easily spawn both a delightful TV drama or a historical look at female journalists.