You All Grow Up and Leave Me

December 1, 2017

Part true crime, part coming-of-age story, Weiss's memoir details the time she spent training with Gary Wilensky, a popular private tennis coach to Upper East Side prep school students during the 1990s. Wilensky was affectionately known as "Grandpa Gary" in the prep school tennis circuit, and it was considered an honor to be coached by him and considered one of "Gary's girls." It was not until the parents of one of his students grew suspicious of his increasingly obsessive behavior toward their daughter that his true persona emerged. After Wilensky's failed attempt to kidnap this student, investigators uncovered a "cabin of horrors" in the Adirondacks, where Wilensky had stockpiled bondage gear and surveillance equipment. Weiss provides an eyewitness account of the scandal and what it was like to be coached by a child predator. VERDICT The author uses interviews, police reports, and her own hindsight to sort through memories that have disturbed her since adolescence. Haunting.--Erin Shea, Ferguson Lib., CT

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February 15, 2018
A woman who grew up under the tutelage of a predatory child molester shares her story.As a youth in Manhattan, Weiss (My Mom, Style Icon, 2011) was a tennis hopeful at "one of the top private schools in the country." Her memoir, a lyrically crafted yet unsettling affair, opens on a bus, with she and her classmates on their way to tennis lessons. She learned about Gary Wilensky, an in-demand private coach who became popular with many other girls at the school. The book's framework is culled from police reports, articles, interviews, personal field research, and Wilensky's own words, transcribed from documents. Through this dogged research, Weiss charts Wilensky's early life and his sketchy employment history and then moves into his private life, which became increasingly disturbing and sinister, ultimately revealing the shrouded world of a sexual obsessive who preyed on vulnerable, unassuming young girls. Running alongside this narrative is the story of the author's privileged upbringing and adolescent experiences, which paint a multitonal portrait of a girl in flux with schoolwork, insecurities, desires to succeed and discover herself, all while blissfully unaware of the predatory deviant lurking beneath the facade of a goofy middle-aged tennis coach who was cool with all the kids. By the time the author had her first tennis lessons with "Grandpa Gary" in the early 1990s, he had already amassed a group of favorite girls to whom he'd send valentines and divulge intimate secrets. Wilensky also began fully furnishing a remote cabin hideaway with bondage and torture equipment and surveillance technology. Was Weiss his next victim? No one will ever know; Wilensky killed himself after the failed kidnapping attempt of a mother and daughter he'd been stalking. Weiss has crafted a dark and brooding yet brisk and eloquently written memoir, and her vivid coming-of-age narration shines a spotlight on the precarious relationship between teenagers and adults and everything that can go awry in between.A bristling, harrowing journey into the life of a stalker and his unsuspecting victims.

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February 1, 2018
In a combination of memoir and true crime, Weiss evokes her early 1990s teenage years and her involvement with a private tennis coach named Gary Wilensky. A child of privilege who lived on Park Avenue in New York, Weiss was part of a coterie of wealthy prepubescent and pubescent girls who were Wilensky's students. Well known in New York tennis circles, Wilensky was popular with his students, who called themselves Gary's Girls. Little did they know that he was a secret stalker obsessed with his students, one in particular whom he attempted, fecklessly, to kidnap. Failing, he committed suicide. The case was a sensation in 1993 but is now largely forgotten except by Weiss, who proves to have something of an obsession of her own with the case. Her story is divided between the early nineties and the near present. The true-crime part of her book is significantly more interesting than her report of her own unexceptional life as a well-to-do teen. As a result, this one is strictly for true-crime fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)