Borrowed Finery - by Paula Fox (Paperback)

About the Book

The writer Paula Fox examines her childhood and youth, during which time she was shuttled between different cities by her parents, a hard-drinking screenwriter dad and an icy-tempered, indifferent mother.

Book Synopsis

Pointillist in detail, lapidary in method and brutal in effect...an eloquent, disturbing memoir." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Born in the 1920s to nomadic, bohemian parents, Paula Fox is left at birth in a Manhattan orphanage, then cared for by a poor yet cultivated minister in upstate New York. Her parents, however, soon resurface. Her handsome father is a hard-drinking screenwriter who is, for young Paula, "part ally, part betrayer." Her mother is given to icy bursts of temper that punctuate a deep indifference. Never sharing more than a few moments with his daughter, Fox's father allows her to be shuttled from New York City, where she lives with her passive Spanish grandmother, to Cuba, where she roams freely on a relative's sugarcane plantation, to California, where she finds herself cast upon Hollywood's seedy margins.

The thread binding these wanderings is the "borrowed finery" of the title of this astonishing memoir of one writer's unusual beginnings, which was instantly recognized as a modern classic.

Review Quotes

"Pointillist in detail, lapidary in method and brutal in effect...an eloquent, disturbing memoir." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Original and elegant...A celebration of resilience--both of character and of the memoir form." --Sandra Scofield, Chicago Tribune

"Restrained yet unsparing...Fox is an accomplished writer, with a gift for penetrating to the heart of complex feelings and complicated situations." --Merle Rubin, Los Angeles Times

About the Author

Paula Fox (1923-2017) is the author of the memoirs The Coldest Winter and Borrowed Finery, six novels, and a number of children's and young adult books, including the Newberry Award-winning children's book, The Slave Dancer. She lived in Brooklyn, New York.