The Bag Lady Papers The Priceless Experience of Losing It All A True Story
By Alexandra Penney Voice, 216 pages, $23.99
Alexandra Penney got burned by Bernie Maddoff, losing her life’s savings to the Pope of Ponzi, which triggered fears she might become a bag lady – a fear that has also struck Gloria Steinem Lily Tomlin, Shirley MacLaine “and many other accomplished, well-off women.” Ms. Penney, best known as the former editor of Self magazine and author of “How To Make Love To A Man” didn’t bottom out in the traditional sense, though she does write that she Googled the Hemlock Society seeking a “painless way to die” after learning her nest egg had gone belly-up. The better angels of her world were quick to the rescue. Tina Brown immediately asked her to write a blog (with assistance) for The Daily Beast, she knocked off a piece for the Sunday Times of London and there was also a book offer. Friends bearing $200-a-bottle champagne also softened the fall, which included trying to unload properties in Florida and the Hamptons. The unfolding economic meltdown was even worse for others: One couple she knew faced the prospect of leaving New York to move back to Pittsburg – the equal, it appears, of relocating under a bridge. While many readers might pray to fall into such circumstances, Ms. Penney’s pain seems real enough, especially as she recalls her upbringing as a privileged child with distant parents. She writes with an plainspoken if dramatic voice about gaining a deeper sense of life and that while having money was great, losing it taught her “it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” She can even live without Botox these days and has learned the joys of bartering, serving pizza to dinner guests, and if nothing else can claim to be party to a major display of irony. In 1999 her beloved former psychiatrist, whom she calls “my mother and my father,” mentioned the Madoff fund – closed at the time, “but I think I know a way that I can get you in.” :Membership’s privileges aren’t all they’re cracked up to be either, though one assumes Ms. Penney’s phone will soon ring (if it hasn’t already) with an offer that will set the manna flowing once again.
