Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

I have two days to finish the current selection for my local book club. Written by Renee Rosen, What the Lady Wants is a fictionalized – and I mean highly fictionalized – account of retail magnate Marshall Field, his family, and the family of the woman who became his mistress for almost thirty years.

The subject seemed interesting. I frequented Field’s (as the store was called in the nineteen sixties) regularly during the various times Chicago was my home. There was absolutely nothing like the flagship location on State Street.

Reading this book has brought back many memories: the Walnut Room, the Christmas windows, the corner clocks, the gloved elevator attendants. Frango mints that were made in-house. Unfortunately, the work isn’t about any of this. It’s more soap-opera, portraying the families involved as self-centered and shallow. History marches through their lives in an equally shallow manner.

The Chicago Fire of 1871, the Haymarket Riots of 1876, and the Columbian Exposition of 1893, have all had their own biographies over the years. And perhaps they were not the real focal point of Rosen’s book. Still, such significant events in Chicago’s history don’t deserve to be merely a backdrop for the extravagant and selfish lifestyle portrayed by the main characters.

I’ll finish What the Lady Wants but prefer my own memories to anything in it.