Borrowed Finery - Softcover

Fox, Paula

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007137230 ISBN 13: 9780007137237

Publisher: Flamingo, 2011

Synopsis

One of the most powerful memoirs of recent times.

Shortly after Paula Fox’s birth in 1923, her hard-drinking Hollywood screenwriter father and her glamorous mother left her in a Manhattan orphanage. Rescued by her grandmother, she was passed from hand to hand, the kindness of strangers interrupted by brief and disturbing reunions with her darkly enchanting parents. In New York, Paula lives with her Spanish grandmother; in Cuba, she wanders about freely on a sugarcane plantation owned by a wealthy relative; in California she finds herself cast away on the dismal margins of Hollywood where famous actors and literary celebrities – John Wayne, Buster Keaton, Orson Welles – glitteringly appear and then fade away.

A moving and unusual portrait of a life adrift. Paula Fox gives us an unforgettable appraisal of just how much – and how little – a child requires to survive.

About this title

Review:

‘“Borrowed Finery” is like being let into a living diary, full of glittering scenes that, as you turn to them, suddenly begin to move. It is a more humane, even-handed and entertaining book than many of the people involved had any right to expect.’ The Times

‘It is with amazement, approaching incredulity, that I read Paula Fox’s account of being abandoned by her parents. Gripping and shocking.’ Sunday Times

‘I highly recommend this tart, poignant tale.’ Sarah Dunant, Books of the Year, Independent on Sunday

‘In less poised hands, this story could turn to self-pitying melodrama. Fox’s telling, however, is as sharp and clean as a whiplash, piquing the reader’s curiosity.’ Herald

From the Publisher:

Offers the same reading experience as Lorna Sage's Bad Blood – readable, honest, beautifully written, quietly devastating.
Paula Fox has a voice of great clarity and simplicity and this is an incredibly powerful, straight-to-the-heart piece of writing.

A novelist and children's writer, her adult fiction is currently undergoing a resurrection in the US, admired and lauded by Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace and Andrea Barrett, to name but a few, who claim a place for her alongside Updike, Roth & Bellow. Several of her novels, including the most famous, Desperate Characters, a piercing portrait of a Sixties NY couple, are spectacularly back in print in the US, and Ms Fox is being rightly appreciated once again.

About this edition

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0007137230
• ISBN 13: 9780007137237
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272