| Vendor | |
|---|---|
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Liepman Literary Agency
Marc Koralnik |
| Original language | |
| English | |
THE SECRET LIFE OF THE LONELY DOLL
Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Henry Holt & Company / Picador:
It's written by a journalist who went looking for a children's book called The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll, which had imprinted itself on her memory as a girl. When she begins her search, she finds the book out of print and selling for huge amounts. She also discovers that she is not the only person with strong memories of the book. There's a whole community of people out there also trying to track it down. When she finally gets her hands on it, she's taken aback by what she reads in it through adult eyes, and it strikes her as both disturbing and sad, though still beautiful. This new reading leads her to seek out the author, Dare Wright, who she finds has been living in a run-down hospital in Queens for years. She goes to visit her, becomes friends with her executor, and is left a good deal of journals and other personal artifacts after Dare dies. Through these papers, she pieces together Dare's bizarre life, told in these pages.
I picked this book up after the film news, and I find it utterly compelling. It reminds me a little of Grey Gardens. There is just something about her story that keeps you turning pages. It's glamorous and fascinating (her mother was leading a life that most women were not able to live at that time, but at great cost to Dare) and heartbreaking. It looks at the freedoms and the limits of imagination in the face of a very lonely life. It's well worth a read, and we'll be talking to publishers about it in London, given the film news. We're bringing a one-sheet with us to the fair, and the text of that page is below, along with an article about the film.
About the book:
In 1957, a children's book called The Lonely Doll was published. With its pink-and-white-checked cover and photographs featuring a wide-eyed doll, it captured the imaginations of young girls and made the author, Dare Wright, a household name.
Close to forty years after its publication, the book was out of print but not forgotten. When the cover image inexplicably came to journalist Jean Nathan one afternoon, she went in search of the book-and ultimately its author. Nathan found Dare Wright living out her last days in a decrepit public hospital in Queens, New York.
Over the next five years, Nathan pieced together Dare Wright's bizarre life of glamour and painful isolation to create this mesmerizing biography of a woman who struggled to escape the imprisonment of her childhood through her art.
About the author:
Jean Nathan graduated from Williams College and the Columbia School of Journalism. She was a staff writer for The New York Observer and a senior editor at Connoisseur magazine. She has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Travel & Leisure, Vogue, and other publications. She lives in New York City.
It's written by a journalist who went looking for a children's book called The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll, which had imprinted itself on her memory as a girl. When she begins her search, she finds the book out of print and selling for huge amounts. She also discovers that she is not the only person with strong memories of the book. There's a whole community of people out there also trying to track it down. When she finally gets her hands on it, she's taken aback by what she reads in it through adult eyes, and it strikes her as both disturbing and sad, though still beautiful. This new reading leads her to seek out the author, Dare Wright, who she finds has been living in a run-down hospital in Queens for years. She goes to visit her, becomes friends with her executor, and is left a good deal of journals and other personal artifacts after Dare dies. Through these papers, she pieces together Dare's bizarre life, told in these pages.
I picked this book up after the film news, and I find it utterly compelling. It reminds me a little of Grey Gardens. There is just something about her story that keeps you turning pages. It's glamorous and fascinating (her mother was leading a life that most women were not able to live at that time, but at great cost to Dare) and heartbreaking. It looks at the freedoms and the limits of imagination in the face of a very lonely life. It's well worth a read, and we'll be talking to publishers about it in London, given the film news. We're bringing a one-sheet with us to the fair, and the text of that page is below, along with an article about the film.
About the book:
In 1957, a children's book called The Lonely Doll was published. With its pink-and-white-checked cover and photographs featuring a wide-eyed doll, it captured the imaginations of young girls and made the author, Dare Wright, a household name.
Close to forty years after its publication, the book was out of print but not forgotten. When the cover image inexplicably came to journalist Jean Nathan one afternoon, she went in search of the book-and ultimately its author. Nathan found Dare Wright living out her last days in a decrepit public hospital in Queens, New York.
Over the next five years, Nathan pieced together Dare Wright's bizarre life of glamour and painful isolation to create this mesmerizing biography of a woman who struggled to escape the imprisonment of her childhood through her art.
About the author:
Jean Nathan graduated from Williams College and the Columbia School of Journalism. She was a staff writer for The New York Observer and a senior editor at Connoisseur magazine. She has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Travel & Leisure, Vogue, and other publications. She lives in New York City.
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Book
Published by Henry Holt |