Primates of Park Avenue - Wednesday Martin

Primates of Park Avenue

By Wednesday Martin

  • Release Date: 2015-06-02
  • Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Score: 3.5
3.5
From 191 Ratings

Description

An instant #1 New York Times bestseller, Primates of Park Avenue is an “amusing, perceptive and…deliciously evil” (The New York Times Book Review) memoir of the most secretive and elite tribe—Manhattan’s Upper East Side mothers.

When Wednesday Martin first arrives on New York City’s Upper East Side, she’s clueless about the right addresses, the right wardrobe, and the right schools, and she’s taken aback by the glamorous, sharp-elbowed mommies around her. She feels hazed and unwelcome until she begins to look at her new niche through the lens of her academic background in anthropology. As she analyzes the tribe’s mating and migration patterns, childrearing practices, fetish objects, physical adornment practices, magical purifying rituals, bonding rites, and odd realities like sex segregation, she finds it easier to fit in and even enjoy her new life. Then one day, Wednesday’s world is turned upside down, and she finds out there’s much more to the women who she’s secretly been calling Manhattan Geishas.

“Think Gossip Girl, but with a sociological study of the parents” (InStyle.com), Wednesday’s memoir is absolutely “eye-popping” (People). Primates of Park Avenue lifts a veil on a secret, elite world within a world—the strange, exotic, and utterly foreign and fascinating life of privileged Manhattan motherhood.

Reviews

  • Light on science, heavy on self adulation

    1
    By Bacheeg
    Lacking
  • Astute observations

    4
    By Sue cassidy
    I was surprised to read some negative reviews of this book and wondered if it was because people tend to be way more critical of people who have money. Regardless, I found the book to be a fascinating take on the view that we are merely highly evolved mammals, not that much different than our subprimate relatives. She supports her theories with interesting examples and astute observations and insights into social interaction and behavior that we all experience similarly, despite different socio-economic circumstances. Highly entertaining read!
  • Not at all what I expected

    2
    By lauren anderson
    Too much whining from a person with great financial freedom. Too much comparison to animal behavior; and lastly she's describing what many, many suburban mothers deal with as well, just amplified buy the financial resources available to the women who live on the upper east side.
  • Not a good read

    1
    By Zcbnn
    I was looking forward to reading this book after reading the Op Ed piece by the author in the NY Times and even pre- ordered it. In my opinion, this book is annoying, self important, and utterly useless. A waste of time. Hopefully the limelight this book has been receiving does not take away from other well deserved books.