Primates of Park Avenue

Adventures Inside the Secret Sisterhood of Manhattan Moms

By: Wednesday Martin Ph.D. Ph.D.

Narrated by: Madeleine Maby

An instant #1 New York Times bestseller, Primates of Park Avenue is an “amusing, perceptive and…deliciously evil” (The New York Times Book Review) memoir of the most secretive and elite tribe—Manhattan’s Upper East Side mothers.

When Wednesday Martin first arrives on New York City’s Upper East Side, she’s clueless about the right addresses, the right wardrobe, and the right schools, and she’s taken aback by the glamorous, sharp-elbowed mommies around her. She feels hazed and unwelcome until she begins to look at her new niche through the lens of her academic background in anthropology. As she analyzes the tribe’s mating and migration patterns, childrearing practices, fetish objects, physical adornment practices, magical purifying rituals, bonding rites, and odd realities like sex segregation, she finds it easier to fit in and even enjoy her new life. Then one day, Wednesday’s world is turned upside down, and she finds out there’s much more to the women who she’s secretly been calling Manhattan Geishas.

“Think Gossip Girl, but with a sociological study of the parents” (InStyle.com), Wednesday’s memoir is absolutely “eye-popping” (People). Primates of Park Avenue lifts a veil on a secret, elite world within a world—the strange, exotic, and utterly foreign and fascinating life of privileged Manhattan motherhood.

Interesting almost scientific read

As someone who has studied anthropology I found this book an interesting read. It is simple enough for someone with no background but I the parts I enjoyed most were her 'field notes' on the costuming of her tribe. Overall it's a more cerebral than your average chick lit but would never the less fit loosely into that category.

Tedious yet compelling

Part comedy and part social commentary, this memoir is indulgent and high brow. While its pop culture anecdotes and references are amusing, I found all the anthropologic details a bit too tedious and detailed. The author beleaguers certain points not requiring such long explanations. I would have loved to have heard more personal experience and stories versus broad conclusions but in the end it was entertaining if not predictable.

Everything

I felt like I was living her experience as she is talking. I was anxious, confident, sad and angry!! Such an eye opener to the private lives of UES.

Witty.

I thought the book moved quickly, the balance of anecdotes to anthropological speak was on point and some of the stories made me laugh out loud. Would recommend. I enjoyed the narrator.

Interesting take on the upper east side...

Although the timeline was a little bit jumpy. One minute the writer is walking to her fitness class in the Hamptons and next she is in a car fighting for a parking space to get to the same class she was just walking to.

A little stretched for dramatic moments at times but has real moments as the story moves along.