Borrowed Finery: A Memoir (23 page)

Portrait of Ivan

Blowfish Live in the Sea

The Slave Dancer

A Place Apart

One-eyed Cat

The Moonlight Man

Lily and the Lost Boy

The Village by the Sea

Monkey Island

Amzat and His Brothers

The Little Swineherd and Other Tales

Western Wind

The Eagle Kite

Radiance Descending

Praise for
Borrowed Finery

“Captures the off-balance existential wooziness of experience in compact, unbidden epiphanies … [A] singular, unsentimental memoir.”

—Chris Lehmann,
The Washington Post Book World

“Fascinating.”

—Thomas Mallon,
The New York Times Book Review
(cover review)

“The marvel of
Borrowed Finery
is just how even-tempered and objective her approach is to material that is ready-made for judgment.… Entirely refreshing.”

—Chris Navratil,
The Boston Globe

“[Fox is] one of our nation’s most particular and morally probing writers.… There’s nothing naïve about her plain language and clean, sharp images; she’s an artist all through, shaping the memoir as deliberately as she does the fiction.”

—Polly Shulman,
Newsday

“Tantalizing for its restraint. Paula Fox’s much-anticipated memoir,
Borrowed Finery,
recounts with her trademark economical style her lonely and nomadic childhood.”

—Megan O’Grady,
Vogue

“Precise, elegant, yet truly heart wrenching … If
Borrowed Finery
were simply the triumph of careful craft and flawlessly controlled prose that it certainly is, it would still rank as one of the most impressive books of the year. But it offers its readers something even more valuable: an inspiring embodiment of courage, integrity, and, to use an old-fashioned word, character.”

—Gerald Howard,
The Nation

“Compelling … You feel you’ve been privy to something memorable and weighty: the birth, however difficult, of an artist’s—a woman artist’s—sensibility.”

—Daniel Mendelsohn,
New York
magazine

“There is a tough, ferruginous streak in Fox’s prose that is inimical to sentimentality.… Fox never pretends to have told all, or even mostly all. But she does restore to a genre that has become characterized by garrulous frankness the long-forgotten power of discretion.”

—Zoë Heller,
The New Republic

“Devastatingly clear-eyed … a chilling, bracing exploration of her own memory.”

—
Time Out New York

“Our only regret: the memoir ends too soon.… Sequel, please.”

—Lisa Levy,
Mademoiselle

“Lovely … poignant, beautifully crafted.”

—John Freeman,
Star-Tribune
(Minneapolis)

“Fox is elegantly understated, relying on well-chosen detail and striking images to tell her tale.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“Startling and wonderful in many ways …
Borrowed Finery
is pure, powerful in its austerity and stark presentation of moments as artifacts that have their own resonance.”

—Darcy Cosper,
The Hartford Courant

“Delicate, understated …
Borrowed Finery
reminds us that a successful memoir doesn’t merely require a good story but also a writer capable of doing that story justice.”

—Connie Ogle,
The Miami Herald

“Austere yet painfully moving: a refreshing contrast to the spate of whiny memoirs currently crowding bookstore shelves.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“
Borrowed Finery
consists of some of the most perfect prose published last year, as pristine and silvery as a mountain brook in the moonlight.”

—
Salon.com

“Fox depicts selfishness, neglect, and loneliness in a manner that may be dry and conversational but whose economical passion stirs fervent sympathy in the reader.”

—Jeanne Hamilton,
The Commercial Appeal
(Memphis)

“A rare gem.”

—James Schiff,
Book
magazine

Paula Fox is the author of the memoir
The Coldest Winter
(Henry Holt), six novels, including
Desperate Characters,
and is a Newbery Award–winning children’s book author. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

BORROWED FINERY.
Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2001 by Paula Fox. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.picadorusa.com

Picador
®
is a U.S. registered trademark and is used by Henry Holt and Company under license from Pan Books Limited.

For information on Picador Reading Group Guides, as well as ordering, please contact Picador.

Phone: 646-307-5626

Fax: 212-253-9627

E-mail: [email protected]

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fox, Paula.

Borrowed finery : a memoir / Paula Fox.

       p. cm.

ISBN 0-312-42519-8

EAN 978-0-312-42519-7

1. Fox, Paula—Childhood and youth. 2. Novelists, American—20th century—Biography. I. Title.

PS3556.094 Z464 2001

813'.54—dc21

00-054398

First published in the United States by Henry Holt and Company

eISBN 9781466850149

First eBook edition: July 2013