Upper Bohemia Hayden Herrera by Hayden Herrera 9781982105280, 1982105283 instant download after payment.

Hayden Herrera’s parents each married five times; following their desires was more important to them than looking after their children. When Herrera was only three years old, her parents separated, and she and her sister moved from Cape Cod to New York City to live with their mother and their new hard-drinking stepfather. They saw their father only during the summers on the Cape when they and the other neighbourhood children would be left to their own devices by parents who were busy painting, writing, or composing music. 

These adults inhabited a world that Herrera’s mother called “upper bohemia,” a milieu of people born to privilege who chose to focus on the life of the mind. Her parents’ friends included such literary and artistic heavyweights as artist Max Ernst, writers Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy, architect Marcel Breuer, and collector Peggy Guggenheim. On the surface, Herrera’s childhood was idyllic and surreal. But underneath, the pain of being a parent’s afterthought was acute. 

Upper Bohemia captures the tension between a child’s excitement at every new thing and her sadness at losing the comfort of a reliable family. Intimate and honest, Upper Bohemia “captures an enchanted but erratic childhood in a rarefied milieu with the critical but appreciative eye of a seasoned art historian” (The Wall Street Journal).