With the publication of her first novel, Gilding Lily, last September, Tatiana Boncompagni thought she was finally fulfilling the social aspirations she’d harbored since marrying vacuum heir Maximilian Hoover in 2003. “My picture ran in a lot of places, and all these people came to my book party,” the pretty Georgetown University grad, 31, recalls. “I was getting some of the attention that maybe I wanted; I thought that these things would make me feel successful. They didn’t.”
Where she did find fulfillment was in her decidedly unglamorous daily routine as a writer and a mother. Most days, she says, she looks after her children (ages two and four) and makes the beds in her Upper East Side apartment. Her latest novel, Hedge Fund Wives, out in May, presciently explores the recession’s effects on wealthy New York couples. “I had all these friends in marriages that were made easier by money,” she says. “Your husband doesn’t help with the kids? Hire another nanny. Money is the ultimate lubricant. I was inspired by what would happen when the economy soured.”
While the book may prompt certain New Yorkers to guess at the real-life inspirations behind the characters, it sparked drama even before its publication. In October Boncompagni sued her sister, Natasha, for allegedly stealing and copyrighting the manuscript. In January Natasha dropped her coauthorship claim, but the fallout, cattily documented in the press, left Boncompagni estranged from her sister
and parents. “The death of my social aspirations went not with a bang but with a whisper,” she says. “But if there was a nail in the coffin, it was what happened with my sister.”
But given that Boncompagni is hardly the only American experiencing a touch of schadenfreude while watching the ultrarich grapple with the recession, Hedge Fund Wives will surely win her new fans. “I’m sad for friends who lost jobs, but I don’t think this will be remembered as another Great Depression,” she says. “I think it will be remembered as the Great Correction.”
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