A Day in the Life: One Family, the Beautiful People, and the End of the Sixties

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A Day in the Life: One Family, the Beautiful People, and the End of the Sixties (eBook) Pub. Date: 6/17/2009 Publisher: Da Capo Press
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A Day in the Life: One Family, the Beautiful People, and the End of the Sixties Pub. Date: 5/4/2009 Publisher: Da Capo Press

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Overview

A Day in the Life is the story of how the ideal marriage between two young and extraordinarily beautiful members of the English upper class fell apart as the psychedelic dreams of the sixties gave way to the harsh, hard-rock reality of the seventies. A tender, moving, and often harrowing look at the moment in time when the counterculture collided with the international jet set, A Day in the Life captures the spirit of that era and the people who lived through it with unerring accuracy and heartfelt precision.

When Tommy Weber and Susan “Puss” Coriat, London’s most beautiful couple, were married in 1964, it was the fitting end to a storybook romance. But the fast cars Tommy loved to race, their celebrity friends, and the huge trust fund Puss had inherited masked a tortured truth—both had suffered through oppressive and neglectful childhoods and were now caught up in a wildly extravagant lifestyle that neither Puss’ inheritance nor Tommy’s increasingly desperate schemes could support. Six years later, Puss found herself wandering around India with her two sons while Tommy, who was now smuggling drugs to survive, lived in London with a stunning young actress. A Day in the Life is also the stirring account of how the couple’s tow sons—one of whom is the well-known actor Jake Weber—somehow managed to survive a childhood that would have destroyed those of lesser spirit.

An unbelievable true-life tale that often reads like a novel, A Day in the Life follow the fortunes and misfortunes of one remarkable family while also introducing us to an extensive cast of supporting characters that includes Keith Richards, Anita Pallenberg, Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, John Lennon, and Charlotte Rampling, as well as many of the movers and shakers who helped create the “Swinging London” scene.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

In this roving relationship biography, journalist Greenfield (Exile on Main St.) documents the end of swinging London and the psychedelic 1960s through the breakdown of a high-society, scene-hopping married couple. Tommy Weber and Susan "Puss" Coriat were pure products of their times: Tommy was a racecar driver-turned-drug supplier (for no less than the Rolling Stones); Puss's experimentation with LSD and quest for a spiritual guru would lead to schizophrenia, involuntary hospitalization and electro-shock therapy. The couple's two young sons, caught between their coke-addled father (Tommy once taped a pound of cocaine to each of them to get through customs) and their mother's steady mental decline, prove remarkably resilient. Following the couple's divorce, Tommy and his sons lived with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards (and his hangers-on) in the south of France, where Tommy got heavily into heroin; Puss's thwarted plan to meet them there in 1971 would presage her suicide by sleeping pills. Capturing the tenor and tone of the era, Greenfield's dysfunctional family is just as mesmerizing as his previous big-name subjects like Jerry Garcia and Timothy Leary.
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Kirkus Reviews

Journalist and screenwriter Greenfield (Exile on Main St.: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones, 2006, etc.) pens a eulogy for the 1960s with his portrayal of the ascent and downfall of two upper-class wanderers. Descended from old money, 20-somethings Susan "Puss" Coriat and Tommy Weber lived off their trust funds, rubbing elbows with Britain's elite as they discovered their callings-Tommy as a race-car driver, Puss as an actress. By 1964, the couple was married with two baby boys, and they soon fell into the drug experimentation of the mid-'60s. On a trip to the Greek islands with her children in tow, Puss suffered a schizophrenic episode. With her institutionalized, Tommy took charge of the children, soon befriending Keith Richards and staying with the Rolling Stones in France during the recording of Exile on Main St. It was the peak before the fall for both the '60s and the lives of Puss and Tommy. By 1971, heroin and cocaine became the mainstays of a scene once limited to LSD and marijuana, and Tommy fell into heavy abuse. Puss, as happened with more than a few of the "European hippie jet-set scene," committed suicide. Tommy then couch-surfed around Europe with his children, hanging out with stars and scammers, even cooking up plans to free Timothy Leary, then a fugitive in Switzerland. Fast-forward a couple decades. Son Jake became a well-known actor, starring in NBC's Medium, while Charley became a musician and Web designer. After abusing his body for decades, Tommy died in 2006. To sum up the turbulent decade, the author visited Puss' grave, writing that, along with her physical remains lies "the spirit of an age long since gone, a moment in time when those engaged in a grandsocial experiment did everything they could to break free from all constraints."Though it often reads like an extended society gossip column, the narrative is studded with enough trivia and name-dropping to engage ex-hippies and other fans of '60s culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780306816222
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Publication date: 5/4/2009
Pages: 368
Product dimensions: 5.90 (w) x 8.30 (h) x 1.30 (d)

Meet the Author

Robert Greenfield is the author of several books, including Exile on Main St.: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones. An award-winning novelist, screenwriter, and journalist, he lives in California.

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