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kneuk's review
funny
informative
fast-paced
4.0
Fascinating little book. I enjoyed her wide vocabulary (and her love of tortoiseshell cats!)
pbraue13's review
5.0
Lee Israel was a gay woman who wrote a few biographies of famous women before falling into financial ruin and relative obscurity until she began to forge letters from literary elites like Noel Coward, Edna Ferber, Dorothy Parker, and Lillian Hellman among others. While Lee is, as presented here and in the subsequent film made from this book, a rather unlikeable person she is a damned good writer! She is biting and witty and has some lines that made me chuckle while reading ("Flies, in 1990, were an Upper West Side anomaly, something like a registered Republican" (p. 29)). Through these fabulous, smart, and catty insults and remarks she cannot help, but be likable. Even when she is doing childish and sometimes cruel things like pranking a rude bookstore employee by calling and telling him his home is on fire and his dog is trapped to impersonating Nora Ephron in order to leave vulgar phone calls (she later received a cease and desist letter from Ephron's lawyers which is hilarious), she is still so smart and fun to observe and listen to. Here is a woman who so easily disappeared behind her subjects in the biographies she wrote that she was able to disappear into the guise of the people she wrote fake letters for. She was so convincing some of her letters made it into some biographies and published letter collections. That is wild. Israel's tone of biting and sometimes dark humor leads you as a reader to even laugh at some of the things that she herself falls prey to - her cat dying, her money problems, etc. - not to mention the events that led to her writing this book. After all what is entertainment and comedy, but laughing at another's misfortune (although I do have to say if I had to sell the letter by Katherine Hepburn she had I would have wept as hard as Katherine did while writing the letter). Also, as someone who enjoys typewriters more than most people around my age, when Israel went into the typewriters and paper she hunted down to write these forged letters I was not bored though I can see where some people may glaze over. It's also cool to see how we write reveals who we are as people. It's because of this I was so interested in the people she wrote for and about - Lee added many books to my TBR. A quick and short read but lots of fun. As the New York Times Book Review once said, "a slender, sordid and pretty damned fabulous book".
egerbosch_dobgirl99's review against another edition
informative
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
3.5
gathoni_n's review
I love her writing style but I got to point where I just didn't care enough to finish the book. Might see the film then.
horfhorfhorf's review
2.0
An excellent example of how the human mind can justify just about anything - to itself, at least. I'll concede it's well-written but the literary name-dropping pulled me out of the story too often for me to find its flow. A (partial) admission of guilt with zero apology.
stevenyenzer's review
4.0
I normally don't like this kind of arch and almost aggressively literate prose, but for some reason I didn't mind Israel's. I just wish there had been more to it!
gertrude314's review against another edition
4.0
I can see how this would make a good movie, the writer certainly is a character! Her story is pretty short and engaging.
thebookvvitch's review
3.0
A cautionary tale about what happens when you have a great turn of phrase, but not morals.