Come to the Edge: A Love Story

First, BUY THE BOOK & READ IT! IT'S VERY GOOD. I read a book about John shortly after his death. also a book by Michael Bergin, the male model Carolyn Bessette dated and finally, a technical book of his plane crash since I have an interest in aviation. But this is probably the best book for understanding the real JFK Jr. Mostly that's because not only did the author date him for five years but she grew up with him in the prep school scene in NYC & there's many great stories of that time here. First, my compliments to Christian Haag. Great job writing and a great stories about her life also: her love of acting and the initial adventure of studying to be an actor and then her early success and battle for relevance. The book also details JFK Jr.'s strong interest in acting culminating in an off Broadway play in which Christina also is a star which leads to the five years of dating. MUCH has been written about JFK Jr but I've yet to read anything bad about him as a person. Yes, he was emotional. Yes, he was reckless. But, he really comes across as a normal guy who cares for all, is not rude, and values his friendships immensely. But of course, this is a relationship that either ends or ends with marriage generally. And as always the ending is never perfect particularly when you are the most wanted bachelor in the USA and any relationship will be broadcast for all to see. Reading this book you do wonder if "she was the one". They have a great relationship and enjoyed great times together while occasionally also enjoying some adventures that almost end in physical disaster. This is a really good book written by a great author with a story to tell. it's not a "tell all". It's a "this is what this part of my life was like". I STRONGLY recommend your reading this book.

This is a romance novel, even though it is based on a true story. The language, descriptions, emotions, are all written in that super flowery language. You can hear the ocean beating on the shore, see the moon in the sky, smell the flowers in the air on every page. It is never sexually graphic -- you will not read anything more than a kiss. Ms. Haag's passions are Victorian, the smell of his skin, the muscles in his back. That's all you get. Their relationship seems to be a series of dangerous adventures, camping, hiking, boating, kayaking, climbing, in which he is shockingly unconcerned for her welfare. He says she can say no any time and he'll stop, but you know she can't if she wants to stay in the relationship. He wants to dare death at every turn, and it doesn't matter if her foot is in a cast and she can't swim, he'll take her on a treacherous kayak trip anyway. It is no wonder so many women who date or marry Kennedy men end up mangled or dead. Why are they all so compelled to do dangerous things? Or is it they just have too much time on their hands and the money to do whatever they want? We learn he often goes on these adventures with a casual disregard for having the proper safety equipment. We learn he has no capacity for loyalty and like his elder relatives, felt going out with a variety of women should be allowed, while his women have to stay faithful to him. We learn he never wanted to be a lawyer; that his heart was in acting, but his mother forebade it. We learn he is very afraid of his mother, and when he goes into panic mode, he paces and mumbles "don't tell mummy, don't tell mummy." We learn that Ms. Haag introduced him to the Georgia island where he eventually married someone else, so that came as an afront to her. We do not learn why they broke up except that she became intolerant of his dating other women. JFK Jr did the classic cad move. When it was time to take the relationship to the next level, he claimed he had to date other women for awhile to see if he was really ready. We do not learn anything about their relationship after the final break-up. Oddly, Ms. Haag never married, which is sad. JFK Jr is a common male personality type, one who makes you feel like the center of the universe when you are with him, who gives special gifts and writes loving letters, and yet, unknown to you, he is carrying on the same way with half a dozen women and they all feel like they are the one special one. Ms. Haag needs to get over this. This was not the romance of the century, this was an extended fling with a championship, Warren Beatty-level player. And she is lucky he didn't kill her on one of his reckless adventures. Mrs. Onassis drifts in and out of this story like a whispery ghost. Whenever she's in the room, everyone walks on eggshells and speaks to her in awe. She is literally given queen status. You don't even dare walk in front of her patio when she is on it. We do learn that she told Christina if she had it to do over again, if she could have Jack Kennedy back, she would say no.

Christina Haag's memoir, Come To The Edge, A Memoir, is gripping and intimate, an American tale of life and love, an ongoing tragedy, an affair of the heart, an engrossing sharing of two minds, a best friendship, a gathering of family, a table of friends. Christina, a beautiful Juilliard actress, from Broadway to Shakespeare, to the big screen and television, is schooled in NYC with JFK, Jr, knows him well, attends Brown University with him, rooms with him, and later, loves with him. Through divine poetry and prose, through the tender and dreamy verse of a woman in love, she discovers herself, her needs, her gifts, her purpose. She learns what moves and drives her...and him. This is a book for everyone to fall into, winds to the currents, all bets off. No matter who you are, no matter what you think you may know of John, you never really knew him, not in the beautifully rich and dreamy way Christina did...and does. He is so much within and around her. You will fall in love with Christina, her magnetic charm and appeal, her gift for the stage, her verve for life and family and all things new and challenging, her vitality and durability, her willingness to remain true to herself; in love, she is prepared to give her heart to a man she adores, despite her fierce attention to self, which, in the end, defines her and keeps her whole and sane. John was an enigma, a riddle to most of us, briefly moving through this life, and never once conforming to what the world had expected of him. He was a philosopher, a thinker, a young man with dreams and ambitions all his own, a beautiful soul, and Christina, vivacious, alluring and unique, was his love, and, it would seem, will always be. You will see that the son of Camelot was complex and flawed, yet full of compassion and warmth. Death can pry us from our hearts, obliterate courage, tear with gusto the delicate assembly of what we think we know and what we want to be. When challenged, we can wilt, but Christina will move on, much on the strength of her character and will, much at the expense of what she thought might destroy her. A literary alchemist, Ms. Haag takes an ordinary love story and brings us to a golden universe of experience ~ tenderness, sexual energy, small talk turned meaningful, the touch of the hand, the curling of the lip, the all powerful embrace. This truly is a luscious love story, a book without pretense, without over indulgence, an authentic and masterful expose. Grab a hold of this book, take it to bed with you and allow the poetry of Haag's writing to nestle in places only you dare go.

Every once in a while you come across a book that ignites a sense of emotional hunger inside of you, a hunger that gets you hooked and compels you to read on, even when you should be doing other things like getting the groceries or doing that load of washing that's been sitting there all week! A book that compels you to not make any plans so that you can sit down, uninterrupted, to be taken on a journey and let into the private world of a complete stranger who has an exceptional story to tell. This is one of those books. Christina Haag is a theatre actress who grew up in New York City during the 1970s and 80s - a time when America had begun to outgrow it's conservative roots, shifting into a mecca of multiculturalism and undergoing great social and economic changes. Christina recalls this as an exciting time to be a young college student and aspiring actress and she portrays this time in her life with great fondness and nostalgia. What makes Christina's story 'exceptional'? What is it about her journey that drew me in like a magnet? Why did I love this book so much? Christina Haag grew up as a close friend of John F. Kennedy Jnr (aka as John John) - the charismatic, handsome son of JFK. It is through this friendship that Christina begins this literary journey, revealing the first time she laid eyes on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis when she was a young girl attending the same school as John's sister Caroline, and the slow growing friendship that she formed with this lady of history, at first from a distance as John John's school friend and then later as a confidante when Christina and John fell in love in their early 20s. This book offers a rare insight into the Kennedy family - holidays that Christina attended, the wedding of John's sister Caroline, the experience of getting to know one of the most famous First Lady's in American history, and most importantly, the personal experience of new love and the trials and tribulations that inevitably entered the turbulent and passionate relationship that Christina and John shared. To Christina's credit, she never crosses a line into exposing anything too private or outlandish about what she saw and experienced within the Kennedy family and you get a sense that there was a mutually shared love and respect between them. Christina describes her grief when she first heard the news that John had died tragically with his wife Caroline and her sister in a plane crash in 1999. She delves deeply into the reasons why she feels they did not end up marrying and you can't help but wonder if she would have been on that plane if they had. The book is beautifully written, as though Christina were writing a poetic love letter to John himself, the words flowing eloquently and with ease. At times Christina's chapters jump from various time frames - one minute you're reading about a date she was having with John, the next you're reading about an experience she had as a child. This may bother some people, but I found that it didn't really affect the flow of the story given that it is written so well. I recommend this book to all those who enjoy a good love story and anyone who has a fascination with the Kennedy family.

Forget that this book is about a member of America's so-called Royal Family. Although the glamour and privilege of being a Kennedy are woven through many pages of this luminous memoir, it's a testament to Christina Haag's loving, scrupulous memory; her understanding of the universals of love among childhood-friends-turning-pals-turning-soulmates; and her romantic's limning of the piercing Aha! moments of coming or age in a very precise time and place (it doesn't hurt that it's a glamorous one), that all cliched associations with The Kennedys fade as you read. You are reading a story of self-discovery, and mutual self-discovery, and rapture, in a finely described, very particular milieu. The story opens with Christina and John circling each other as uniformed private school peers in the elite but constricted world of MAD MEN Era uber-Upper East Side. You feel the world changing as Vatican II and The Sixties opens her eyes, as she wanders two blocks, six blocks, then thrillingly subways down to the once-verboten Village to realize her love and her destiny: Acting. Like the best of Manhattan-based coming of age memoirs, the exotic rituals of one tiny class of people are painstakingly but never judgmentally rendered, and the city's uniquely tight geography - a mile is like an ocean! -- makes the change of world on that life-stuffed little island amusingly and plausibly epic. The young John -- open, eager, but a bit hapless among his savvier young peers -- turns out to be Christina's housemate at Brown (Christiane Amanpour is a third; what a house!) - and they Roommate Cute, including a fight over the night's menu. But something is inevitably pulling these two together -- and we know enough about them and LIKE them enough to greet their eventual full-blown committed love affair (launched when they play opposite one another in an Irish play) with forward-leaning sympathy, respect -- and fascination. They travel - man, do they travel! -- far and wide, with innkeepers and hoteliers always opening the doors with a young-royals-greeting smile..but their blithe, adventurous privilege (and bravery in roiling nature) never makes you jealous; they are, thanks to Christina's trustworthy emphasis, too fully realized as characters, too likeable and decent, and, each in their own way, too vulnerable, for jealousy to cloud your enjoyment of their love affair. Not an easy feat. Haag weaves in the "Kennedy" parts with such bone-deep comfort and naturalness, they have a striking intimacy but never seem preening at all. Her scenes at Jackie's Martha's Vineyard house are so personal and revealing they're gasp-worthy,but there's no sense of trespass, of exploitation. And here, as everywhere, what counts is the character development. That the once-too-rambunctious John is still smarting from earlier unwelcome incursions on her mother's private time (so much so that he uncharacteristically lashes out at Christina) is what we see. That Jackie let John have his girflriend spend the night in his room because she wanted to raise a very different (and better) young man than his womanizing-in-a-sex-negative-world father is an observation as natural and sensible as it is understated. Inevitably, the burdens of being too venerated for his lineage while trying to make his own way, as his own man (and the temptations of a too-handsome, too-famous young man in a Page Six world) start cropping up, and hindering the impressively nurtured relationship of a couple who, in different circumstances, would keep growing together. (You WILL set down the book at some point, sigh, and say: Damn! He SHOULD have married her!) Inevitably, they break up. But no one is the bad guy here because Haag has portrayed John with such plausible humanity and aching specificity (and herself with wise measure -- again, no Hey-I-got-THIS-guy braggadacio). That we know what is to come (and, wisely, Haag places her response to his death earlier in the book; she doesn't risk melodrama OR anticlimax by keeping it in strict sequence) is made all the more poignant by our understanding that this charming but pretty minimally spoiled young man could not beat the misinformation, stuffed in his face from childhood, that he could take risks others could NOT take and walk away unscathed. Like many Americans, I cried when I turned on the TV that summer morning in the '90s and heard the astonishing news of his death. He had always seemed so damn sweet! Guileless, almost -- well, guileless AND foxy, if one can be both. That hunch I had about him was justified -- vivified -- by a scene in the book: John, then in high school, has excitedly spent his allowance money buying his mother not one dress but two (!) for her birthday. Of course, he -- a klutzy young male, despite it all; endearingly not knowing much about fashion, every privilege in his life notwithstanding -- he bought them at a downscale chain dress store, the kind in which receptionists from Queens might shop. "Mommy loved them!" he reports to Christina. (I'm doing this scene from memory; forgive.) "She loved them!" Did she wear them, this perennial # 1 on the Best Dressed List? "Oh, yes!" he says. "All the time. But only inside the apartment." If there is a better description of a very good mother and dear dear teenage son, I challenge you to bring them to me. Thank you -- and Brava, Christina. -- Sheila Weller

I could relate to Christina Haag in her feelings of John and how she's left haunted by a love that was lost. They seemed to make the perfect pairing. Christina captured their adventurous spirit going to exotic places and travels where she took the reader along for the ride. She is a great storyteller. I wished John had stayed with Christina for he seemed like he too had trouble at times when apart from her. I really enjoyed this book & hope Christina either has found or finds another love like what she found with John.

I really enjoyed this book. I think a good part was because I discovered the author and I were not only born in the same hospital but grew up a couple of blocks from each other and went to school right around the corner from each other around the same time period. The author Christina kept journals and her story is told with such great attention to detail you could almost imagine you were there. Wonderful insight into the life of John F. Kennedy Junior, and the author‘s life.

I really enjoyed Christina’s memoir and found it to be written beautifully. I could not put it down. JFK Jr was such a risk taker to the point of being reckless. It was evident in some of the adventures she described.

Christina Haag describes love so deeply and so simply as she intimately writes about her friendship and then romantic relationship with John F.Kennedy Jr. Her memoir has a haunting quality to it, not only because we know the last tragic chapter but because she is able to transport the reader into a New York that is naive, glamorous, dangerous, rarified and now gone. COME TO THE EDGE is a memoir/history novel that one tries to slow down one’s reading while nearing the end so as not to get to that last page. A brave and beautifully written memoir. “Come to the edge," he said. "We can't, we're afraid!" they responded. "Come to the edge," he said. "We can't, We will fall!" they responded. "Come to the edge," he said. And so they came. And he pushed them. And they flew” Guillaume Apollinaire I wept and was engaged from beginning to end. The book has so much grace and sensitivity- it is a timeless love letter. Christina Haag reveals her deep sensitivity and discretion and never slips into sensationalism- she is all restraint and simple honesty and she is a beautifully gifted writer. This is a moving personal and delicate memoir about love, loss and what might have been.

Christina Haag is clearly a sensitive and reflective soul who has written a lovely memoir of young-not first- love. Though I never personally knew John Kennedy jr., I have read a great deal and spoken to people who did know him and she seemed to capture him as I had imagined- full of love, sweet and tender. In other words, a great guy and someone who must have been a dream to be in love with- not because of who his parents were or what his name was- but simply because he was gorgeous on the inside and on the out- sensitive, kind and good. This memoir should relate both to Kennedy family fans as well as to those who are indifferent to the idea of John as the 'heir to the throne' because, though one of the characters is famous, it is mostly a universal love story that anyone who has loved and lost can relate to. It's beautifully written and never glamorizes John or his family, nor judges him or it. It is what it is- a poignant recollection of friendship, love and loss. Christina Haag should feel proud of her work because she wrote it beautifully and respectfully and I believe that John -and possibly even Jackie- would have approved of it.

es gibt glaube ich nicht viele bücher über John f.k. die der Wahrheit entsprechen,dieses buch und das von Rosemarie terenzio ,fairy tale interruptet ,gehört bestimmt dazu. wundervolles buch. schreibe meine Rezessionen auf deutsch die bücher lese ich abernur auf englisch.

Je n'ai pas encore eu le temps de le lire! mais je pense que je vais améliorer ainsi mon anglais d'une manière attractive!

A little long winded but it shows another side of who JR was.