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itsgg's review against another edition
1.0
Disjointed and purposeless -- if you want a memoir about a chaotic childhood with mentally ill parents, The Glass House by Jeanette Walls is a FAR superior book.
yangyvonne's review against another edition
4.0
This book narrates the childhood (mainly) of the author. She led a tumultuous and random life, coming from bohemian parents including her Cuban (and very cold/cruel) mother, Elsie. At. birth, she was left in an orphanage, but her (homosexual) minister uncle keeps her in upstate New York. Her parents reclaim her time after time, only to dump her again with her relatives in Cuba a housekeeper in Florida and her Spanish grandmother in New York. She also ends up un Hollywood when her father goes there to sell a script. Eventually, she reunites with a daughter given up for adoption and re-tells many of her stories.
It is hard to believe that a child with such a destructive and scattered childhood could come to be a Newberry Award winning author of children's novels. Equally amazing is how she found the skills to be a "mother" (in a sense) to her daughter Linda so many years after the adoption. The detail she gives about her relatives is amazing and seemingly without the judgment that most would naturally attach to relatives. Her stories highlight the various decades and seamlessly move the reader through the years.
It is hard to believe that a child with such a destructive and scattered childhood could come to be a Newberry Award winning author of children's novels. Equally amazing is how she found the skills to be a "mother" (in a sense) to her daughter Linda so many years after the adoption. The detail she gives about her relatives is amazing and seemingly without the judgment that most would naturally attach to relatives. Her stories highlight the various decades and seamlessly move the reader through the years.
redbecca's review against another edition
5.0
Beautifully written and exceptional in its capturing of experience without melodrama, sentimentality or cliches.
kgj4k4's review against another edition
3.0
I never know if memoirs are fiction or nonfiction anymore.
Either way, this poor girl had horrible parents.
It's a quick read, but her life kinda depressed me.
Either way, this poor girl had horrible parents.
It's a quick read, but her life kinda depressed me.
pturnbull's review against another edition
4.0
Paula Fox won me over with her Newbery prize winning historical novel The Slave Dancer, a beautifully written young adult novel about the middle passage and a young boy’s compliance with the slave trade. So when I found her memoir Borrowed Finery in the stacks recently, I knew it was a must-read.
This is an unusual memoir, in that Paula Fox was an inconvenience to her parents, who dropped her off at the nearest orphanage shortly after she was born in 1923. Through a lucky set of coincidences, in her early years she had a stable, loving home with a Congregational Minister in the Hudson River valley, known to her as Uncle Elwood. Her life was peripatetic thereafter, occasionally visited by her father, then claimed by her grandmother, Paula was often left with her parents’ friends, and she lived in a variety of living situations with random groups of adults in Florida, Manhattan, Cuba, California, Montreal, and other places. She was neglected and ignored, but the adults she met did not abuse her—in fact, she met kindness from several of them. Others treated her more as a buddy than as a child (including her father, a drunk who tried to make it in Hollywood as a screenwriter). Her mother, from a Cuban family who lost their land in the Spanish-American war, harbored the most resentment against Paula and made little effort to care for her. The Borrowed Finery in the title refers to the hand me down clothing that Paula received, much of it ill-fitting and inappropriate for a child.
The memoir is written from a child’s point of view, a child who matures and becomes insightful, even a bit cynical, reflecting the sophisticated views of her parents. Fox sizes up characters in a pithy, compressed way. Her grandmother, for example, is elegantly described, “She paid no attention to the house or the woods or the river. Her landscape was interior, the countryside of her emotion.” How clearly childhood loneliness—and the disdain accompanying it—is conveyed.
Fox’s nightmarish childhood is always fascinating, as are the strange assortment of adults that she meets. It’s without sentiment or self-pity, making the episodes detailed even more stark and sad. Anyone who likes a good memoir will enjoy this one by a masterful writer. Paula Fox is worth discovering.
This is an unusual memoir, in that Paula Fox was an inconvenience to her parents, who dropped her off at the nearest orphanage shortly after she was born in 1923. Through a lucky set of coincidences, in her early years she had a stable, loving home with a Congregational Minister in the Hudson River valley, known to her as Uncle Elwood. Her life was peripatetic thereafter, occasionally visited by her father, then claimed by her grandmother, Paula was often left with her parents’ friends, and she lived in a variety of living situations with random groups of adults in Florida, Manhattan, Cuba, California, Montreal, and other places. She was neglected and ignored, but the adults she met did not abuse her—in fact, she met kindness from several of them. Others treated her more as a buddy than as a child (including her father, a drunk who tried to make it in Hollywood as a screenwriter). Her mother, from a Cuban family who lost their land in the Spanish-American war, harbored the most resentment against Paula and made little effort to care for her. The Borrowed Finery in the title refers to the hand me down clothing that Paula received, much of it ill-fitting and inappropriate for a child.
The memoir is written from a child’s point of view, a child who matures and becomes insightful, even a bit cynical, reflecting the sophisticated views of her parents. Fox sizes up characters in a pithy, compressed way. Her grandmother, for example, is elegantly described, “She paid no attention to the house or the woods or the river. Her landscape was interior, the countryside of her emotion.” How clearly childhood loneliness—and the disdain accompanying it—is conveyed.
Fox’s nightmarish childhood is always fascinating, as are the strange assortment of adults that she meets. It’s without sentiment or self-pity, making the episodes detailed even more stark and sad. Anyone who likes a good memoir will enjoy this one by a masterful writer. Paula Fox is worth discovering.
redbecca's review against another edition
5.0
Beautifully written and exceptional in its capturing of experience without melodrama, sentimentality or cliches.
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