…in an expansive and revealing new biography, Sometimes You Have to Lie, Leslie Brody assembles the clues to the personal history that shaped Fitzhugh's conscience and creative convictions. Brody, a biographer and playwright who adapted Harriet the Spy for the stage in 1988, has pored through correspondence, memoirs and court documents, and conducted dozens of interviews to reveal the trail that Fitzhugh left unmarked.
The New York Times Book Review - Liesl Schillinger
Expansive and revealing… Leslie Brody assembles the clues to the personal history that shaped Fitzhugh’s conscience and creative convictions. Brody, a biographer and playwright who adapted “Harriet the Spy” for the stage in 1988, has pored through correspondence, memoirs and court documents, and conducted dozens of interviews to reveal the trail that Fitzhugh left unmarked.”—New York Times Wall Street Journal Harriet the Spy and adds sharp political potency to the book’s seemingly innocent play with questions of secrecy and surveillance.” —The New Republic New Yorker Washington Post New York Post Boston Globe Bustle Vox Christian Science Monitor Sometimes You Have To Lie (a piece of Ole Golly dialogue), delves deep into the writer’s fascinating past.”—The A.V. Club Washington Blade BookTrib Sometimes You Have To Lie . Southern Gothic childhood. Escape to Greenwich Village and Europe. Famous friends. String of lovers. Cross-dressing. Publishing gossip. Even a lost manuscript. I was especially pleased to learn so much about the painting career of this groundbreaking writer who considered herself just as much a visual artist. I only wish Brody's book, and Fitzhugh's life, had been much, much longer."— Alison Bechdel,author of Fun Home RozChast, author of Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? Sometimes You Have to Lie does the greatest honor to Louise Fitzhugh and her brilliant avatar, Harriet the Spy: It tells the truth."—Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and Egg & Spoon Harriet the Spy , and so much more. I was fascinated and moved by Louise Fitzhugh's struggles to be and do and have all she desired, and I feel richer for the experience of getting to know her."—Therese Anne Fowler, author of Z:A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald Anne Zimmerman, author of An Extravagant Hunger: The Passionate Years of M.F.K. Fisher Sometimes You Have to Lie , you become like Harriet, spying on Louise Fitzhugh. This wonderfully written biography lets readers walk in Louise's footsteps, as if taking notes on countless details of her complicated, rich life."— Jack Gantos, author of the Rotten Ralph series
07/01/2020
Biographer/playwright Brody, who adapted Harriet the Spy for the stage, portrays the determinedly lesbian/radical life led by Harriet's creator, Louise Fitzhugh, taking her from segregated 1920s Memphis to heady Greenwich Village to postwar Europe. With a 25,000-copy first printing.
2020-09-01
Does Harriet the Spy have a “queer subtext”? Is its heroine a “quintessential baby butch” character? Or is Harriet simply “a nasty little girl who keeps a notebook on all her friends,” as Louise Fitzhugh (1928-1974) told the poet James Merrill, her former adviser at Bard College? While fairly representing these varied points of view, Brody, a creative writing instructor, mostly lets Fitzhugh’s life speak for itself. The author follows her subject from her birth in Memphis to her death from a brain aneurysm in New Milford, Connecticut. Raised by a rich father who won custody after a sensational divorce trial, Fitzhugh later moved in boho circles with Djuna Barnes, Lorraine Hansberry, and Anatole Broyard in Greenwich Village. She had her first lesbian romance as a teenager and, after decades of affairs with women, was “obviously out of the closet” in later life. Yet Fitzhugh had a long-term correspondence only with Merrill, and her estate, the book suggests, keeps a tight rein on other material. Perhaps partly for such reasons, Fitzhugh remains an elusive figure who emerges most clearly through the tensions in her relationships with three celebrated editors who kept their own records: Ursula Nordstrom, Charlotte Zolotow, and Michael di Capua. Di Capua once complained to Fitzhugh about the Black characters’ dialogue in her post-Harriet book Nobody’s Family Is Going To Change : “You don’t know how to write black people.” A longtime lover said that an upset Fitzhugh responded, “I know how I want my characters to sound, and what I want them to say.” Such anecdotes, which are too few, give valuable glimpses of the fierce tenacity Fitzhugh shared with her most famous character.
A diligent but sometimes-hazy portrait of a beloved children’s author and illustrator.
It’s unsurprising that Suzanne Toren has an impressive catalogue of audiobook narrations to her name. Adding to it is this fascinating biography of Louise Fitzhugh, author of the classic middle-grade novel HARRIET THE SPY. From her troubled childhood as part of the Memphis upper class through her adulthood as an artist and writer living in New York City, Toren captures Louise’s wild, artistic nature and brings to life the eclectic mix of people who were part of Louise’s world. Toren’s performance allows one to easily imagine oneself among them. Listeners will find themselves wanting to complete the audiobook in one sitting. A.L.S.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile
It’s unsurprising that Suzanne Toren has an impressive catalogue of audiobook narrations to her name. Adding to it is this fascinating biography of Louise Fitzhugh, author of the classic middle-grade novel HARRIET THE SPY. From her troubled childhood as part of the Memphis upper class through her adulthood as an artist and writer living in New York City, Toren captures Louise’s wild, artistic nature and brings to life the eclectic mix of people who were part of Louise’s world. Toren’s performance allows one to easily imagine oneself among them. Listeners will find themselves wanting to complete the audiobook in one sitting. A.L.S.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile
