Daughter of Spies: Wartime Secrets, Family Lies Paperback – October 25, 2022

This extraordinary book has many carefully orchestrated layers, but the core is about the author's reckoning with her mother's closet alcoholism. Her English mother, TIsh Alsop, a devout Catholic overwhelmed by 12 pregnancies (6 children survive) and the pressure of being a perfect wife to her famouse journalist husband, Stewart Alsop, spirals downward as she secretly drinks behind closed doors. Her mercurial moods and strange absences have a devastating effect on her children, particularly the author, Tish and Stewart's only daughter. Through anecdotes, splendid detail, and interviews with her mother (eventually sober but plagued with dementia), Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop finally comes to know her mother in all her complexity. The book's ending is particularly poignant, and the reader is left with mixed feelings--anger toward TIsh for neglecting her children but also sympathy for the challenges she faced, arriving in Washington, D.C. as an 18-year-old bride, married to a man 12 years her senior, a man she barely knows. Aside from the main thread of the book, one gets an inside view of what it was like to live in London during the Blitz (both the author's parents were spies, Tish for M15 and Stewart for the OSS). The reader is also introduced to the elitist group of intellectuals and politicians in Georgetown in the 1950s and '60s, and is treated to stories about the author's relatives, including Alice Roosevelt Longworth and Teddy Roosevelt. The author does an exceptional job of describing the pitfalls of alcoholic addiction and dementia. She exposes the downside of growing up in a WASP family, where negative emotion is swept under the rug and wealth and fame are not the road to happiness. This is an exceptional, tightly constructed memoir, elegantly written, and a crowning achievement for the author.

Daughter of Spies is a deeply thoughtful examination of a childhood spent in the heart of Cold War Georgetown, amid people with the power to organize and influence policy. Although her mother, the author, and her five brothers were Catholic in a city of WASPS, the author's family dwelled nonetheless on the inside of the political scene, through her journalist father Stewart Alsop, her journalist uncle Joseph Alsop, and the accomplished entertaining of her mother. But the emphasis in Daughter of Spies is on the private view, - the "daughter" word - inquiring what the making and unfolding of such a family meant to a girl child growing up in it. She puzzles out the many blows that inscribed her parents' generation forever in the history and afterlife of World War II. And as she thinks it through, she draws closer to an often distant-seeming mother (a literal spy) who despite mutual insight, love and forgiveness remains fundamentally inscrutable. This was a generation that demanded many kinds of heroism. Daughter of Spies makes a highly perceptive accounting of what it cost them, what we their children and grandchildren inherited, and why we care.

This is a great read!. In fact, I reread it twice! I am loaning it to a friend and I wrote my name inside to make sure I get it back!

A girl’s sensitive, aching and difficult search to understand her mother’s secrets is the beating heart of this fascinating memoir. Set in the complex political world of Washington in the decades following WWII where political luminaries surrounded the household, much is done by the young Elizabeth and her brothers to stake out a life and sense of individuality. It is difficult. Her famous but emotionally remote father is away half the year for his journalism and her mother is locked even further in her bedroom drinking herself into oblivion, overwhelmed with twelve pregnancies, volatile, and mourning her own unhealed early losses. Told in a fascinating way moving back and forth decades in time from when her mother at eighteen secretly worked in England for MI5 and her father was a handsome American soldier, the author gradually uncovers the many secrets she never knew. That the great names of Washington move in and out of the story of Elizabeth’s journey makes the book even more compelling.

This is the first time in a long time that I’ve sat and read a book, as I normally listen to audiobooks. I’m glad I found the time to sit, because the photos in this book brought the characters to life. This book is very relatable if you’ve ever had a loved one with an addiction, or if you’ve ever had to care for a family member as they age. I fell into this story as it moved back and forth throughout time. The characters’ love story during wartime is intriguing, but what happens after the love is no longer new also kept me turning the page. I kept trying to imagine myself in Patricia’s shoes, and trying to relate to her and the decisions she made. This book is very real, and does a good job transporting the reader to another time and place.

One may read about life in Washington, D.C. after World War II, but not understand it well. Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop lived it growing up, and has filled in the before and after with a narrative which is touching and troubling. Her English mother and American father took different wartime espionage roles, then raised a large family in emerging Georgetown among elite journalists, prominent families and politicians. While Stewart Alsop was frequently away from home on writing assignments, Tish Alsop turned to alcoholism. Their only daughter, Elizabeth, skillfully tells about her journey to find the truths that live in the past. It is a mighty memoir.

Having grown up in the same geographical area, time period and somewhat similar class as described by the author, so much of this poignant well-crafted memoir resonated with me - from the "stiff upper lip" upbringing, to a Maryland farm with blacksnakes (ours slithered down the kitchen exhaust pipe and landed on the stove!), to a house crawling with brothers (I had three to her five), to the challenge and heartache of living with an alcoholic parent (in my case - my father) I couldn't put the book down! What a searingly honest and fascinating read. Highly recommended.