The New York Post ripped a huge hole in that controversial 'wife bonus' tell-all, and now the publisher is backtracking
The New York Post fact-checked the just-released book, citing numerous inconsistencies in Martin's story.
A tell-all about life in a circle of über-wealthy moms, the book has become famous for its introduction of the "wife bonus," an annual, performance-based payout that Manhattan's masters of the universe supposedly award to their wives.
Since the wife bonus became news, Martin has downplayed its prevalence. This "backpedaling" seems to have prompted the Post's autopsy.
Here's what the paper uncovered:
- According to property records pulled by the Post, Martin lived on the Upper East Side for three years with one child. The book claims she spent six years there - conducting the memoir's "field work" - with her two children.
- Martin describes being pregnant during the co-op interview for her Park Avenue apartment. However, property records note that the sale of the apartment took place in 2004; Martin's two sons were born in 2001 and 2007.
- She writes about gifts bought at Ladurée, but the macaron shop wasn't open when she lived on the Upper East Side. Martin moved from the Upper East Side to the Upper West Side in 2007. Ladurée opened its first New York City location in 2011.
- She writes about discussing Uber while living on the Upper East Side, but Uber didn't launch in NYC until 2011. Again, Martin lived on the Upper East Side from 2004 to 2007.
- She says she left the Upper East Side because her two sons were accepted by schools on the Upper West Side. But if she moved away from Upper East Side in 2007, her second son, according to the Post, wouldn't have been born yet.
It's worth noting that the Post made an error in its fact check of the book. The paper claimed that Physique 57, the gym where Martin says she lost the weight from her second child, did not exist in 2007, the year the baby was born. According to Physique 57's website, it opened locations in New York and the Hamptons in 2006.
Still, the timeline of events is fuzzy enough that Martin's publisher, Simon & Schuster, is appending future editions of the book with a disclaimer that details and chronologies of the memoir have been changed.