Dark Sparkler - by Amber Tamblyn (Paperback)

About the Book

The lives of more than twenty-five actresses lost before their time from Marilyn Monroe to Brittany Murphy explored in a haunting, provocative new work by an acclaimed poet and actress.

Amber Tamblyn is both an award-winning film and television actress and an acclaimed poet. As such she is deeply fascinated and intimately familiar with the toll exacted from young women whose lives are offered in sacrifice as starlets. The stories of these actresses, both famous and obscure-tragic stories of suicide, murder, obscurity, and other forms of death inspired this empathic and emotionally charged collection of new poetic work.

Featuring subjects from Marilyn Monroe and Frances Farmer to Dana Plato and Brittany Murphy and paired with original artwork commissioned for the book by luminaries including David Lynch, Adrian Tomine, Marilyn Manson, and Marcel Dzama Dark Sparkler is a surprising and provocative collection from a young artist of wide-ranging talent, culminating in an extended, confessional epilogue of astonishing candor and poetic command."

Book Synopsis

"With frank observations and blunt commentary, Tamblyn has created a smartly crafted collection, proving that she is a savvy and fierce woman and poet who knows that behind every spotlight is shadow." -- Booklist

"Dark Sparkler is an elegy, a eulogy, a rhapsody, a rage. In these astonishing poems inspired by dead actresses, Tamblyn fiercely examines the spectacle of the actress as she lives and dies and how our hands and hearts linger on their lives."-- Roxane Gay, author of New York Times bestseller Bad Feminist

The lives of more than twenty-five actresses lost before their time--from Marilyn Monroe to Brittany Murphy--explored in a haunting, provocative new work by an acclaimed poet and award-winning actress, and paired with 12 original, four-color pieces of artwork commissioned for the book by luminaries including David Lynch, Adrian Tomine, and Marcel Dzama.

As a woman who has grown up in the spotlight, Amber Tamblyn is deeply fascinated by--and intimately familiar with--the toll exacted from young women whose lives are offered in sacrifice as starlets. The stories of these actresses, both famous and obscure--tragic stories of suicide, murder, obscurity, and other forms of death--inspired this empathic and emotionally charged collection of new poetic work.

Featuring subjects from Marilyn Monroe and Frances Farmer to Dana Plato and Brittany Murphy--and paired with original artwork commissioned for the book--Dark Sparkler is a surprising and provocative collection from a young artist of wide-ranging talent, culminating in an extended, confessional epilogue of astonishing candor and poetic command.

What is the true cost of being a woman in the spotlight?

• The Cost of Fame: Through the lens of her own experience as an actress, Amber Tamblyn examines the toll exacted on over twenty-five starlets sacrificed to the machine of celebrity culture.
• Haunting Tributes: Elegies and eulogies for both iconic and forgotten actresses, from Marilyn Monroe and Sharon Tate to the lesser-known stories of Peg Entwistle and Dana Plato.
• Original Artwork: Features twelve provocative, full-color pieces commissioned for the book from artists like visionary filmmaker David Lynch and graphic novelist Adrian Tomine.
• Unflinching Honesty: Culminates in a raw, confessional epilogue where the author confronts her own relationship with Hollywood, fame, and survival.

From the Back Cover

Here is the American starlet: discovered, disrobed, displaced, disused, disgorged.

In more than thirty haunting, visceral poetic portraits, acclaimed poet and actress Amber Tamblyn contemplates the interior lives of women who glimmered on-screen and crashed in life--figures as diverse as Frances Farmer and Brittany Murphy, Jayne Mansfield and Dana Plato, Jean Harlow and Sharon Tate, Heather O'Rourke and Dominique Dunne and Marilyn Monroe. Their stories invite us behind the eyes of a century's worth of women, the adored and the disappeared.

Review Quotes

"With frank observations and blunt commentary, Tamblyn has created a smartly crafted collection, proving that she is a savvy and fierce woman and poet who knows that behind every spotlight is shadow." - Booklist

"Reviewers may compare Tamblyn to James Franco, who also wrote poems about his own celebrity, but the two cases aren't really alike: Tamblyn's work seems less slick, and it's more playful and far more personal, with highs and lows that stick around after the cameras are off." - Publishers Weekly

"A memorial and a magical act. . . . Amber Tamblyn is not playing with metaphor or some flight of fancy. She is gifting us with the tragedy, the power, and most of all the truth of these women's lives." - from the Foreword by Diane di Prima

"With a drummer's approach to wording and a coroner's attention to bodily detail, Amber Tamblyn's tragicomic dead girl poems are a thoughtful, ghoulish kick." - Sarah Vowell

"Ms. Tamblyn has a gift for words." - Quentin Tarantino

"Amber Tamblyn's Dark Sparkler is an elegy, a eulogy, a rhapsody, a rage. In these astonishing poems inspired by dead actresses, Tamblyn fiercely examines the spectacle of the actress as she lives and dies and how our hands and hearts linger on their lives." - Roxane Gay, author of New York Times bestseller Bad Feminist

"The poetry collection examines the cost of fame through the lives of some of Hollywood's most infamous and/or tragically unfamous women in accessibly insightful, and deeply moving, lyrical form." - Marie Claire