JACKIE

An ethereal novel imagines the interior life of Jackie Kennedy from the time she met Jack, her husband-to-be, to her death.

After beginning with the horrifying scene of President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, the novel backtracks to 1951, when Jack is a congressman from Massachusetts and Jackie is about to spend a summer in Europe with her sister before taking a job at Vogue. It follows them year by year, homing in on significant scenes from each, moving through their complicated courtship, early marriage, the birth of two children and the loss of two others, the presidency, the assassination and its aftermath, Jackie’s marriage to Aristotle Onassis, her work as an editor in New York, and her cancer diagnosis. The novel is mostly narrated in the present tense by Jackie, with occasional interludes reflecting Jack’s thoughts about her and their relationship, which is perpetually roiled by his affairs. Tripp, who appends an extensive bibliography, has clearly done her research and integrates it seamlessly into the novel, which comes across as sympathetic to Jackie but not cloyingly so. The presidential years are the least compelling with Jackie as the protagonist; it’s hard for thoughts about refurnishing the White House to compete with the drama of the space race and the Cuban missile crisis. For better or worse, she comes into her own after the death of the president, as she makes an escape from the role of icon to her messy marriage to Onassis and a satisfying life as an editor. If the novel sometimes drifts into cliche—Jackie dreamily sees Jack as “six feet of casual stardust,” for instance—it’s redeemed by the close, intelligent, and not always generous attention that Jackie, often forced into the role of passive observer, pays to those around her.

An elegiac and meticulously crafted ode to a still somewhat mysterious figure.