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The author of this book is editor of the London Review of Books and is a member of the family she is writing about: her mother, born in Lodz, was a sister of Motty Eitingon and a cousin of Max. The point of departure — a well-known literary figure with access to family archives and traditions — promises an interesting read and new information on Freud's most faithful follower, Max Eitingon. But the second promise, unfortunately, will remain unfulfilled.
The idea of the book arose when the legend was born in the 1980s that Max Eitingon took part in the kidnapping of a White Russian general by the Soviet secret services in Paris in 1938 and that he himself was a Stalinist agent and had something to do with the high-ranking secret agent Leonid Eitingon, who organized the assassination of Trotsky (see Draper, 1990[1988]; Schröter, 1997). This speculation appeared to be corroborated by the fact that the fur-trading firm in New York, which was managed by Max's cousin (and brother-in-law) Motty and which provided most of Max's income, conducted a business worth millions of dollars with the Soviet Union. The prospect that her own relations might have collaborated in such sinister and momentous events fired Mary-Kay Wilmers's imagination: she wanted to find out the facts. But her research into the affair struck a blank: there were no relevant links between the Eastern and Western Eitingons.
In the main Wilmers has reconciled herself to the cold reality, even though she now and again betrays her desire to have seen herself more