'Jackie, Janet & Lee' book review: A story of American 'royalty'

Taraborrelli presents a woman of passion, both sexual and emotional, whose facade somehow always remains in place

The writer Nancy Mitford, one of six daughters, once said that sisters “stand between one and life’s cruel circumstances.” To which the younger Jessica Mitford replied that sisters were life’s cruel circumstances. By the end of Jackie, Janet & Lee, with its riveting exposition of the relationship between the two Bouvier sisters — who became Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Princess Lee Radziwill — one tends to take Jessica’s side.

Nancy herself was often the Lee figure of the Mitford household: A bright and stylish woman who would have been the star of almost any family on earth. She was constantly confronted