Borrowed Finery
Paula Fox
Henry Holt and Co.
<p><p>An exotic, heartbreaking memoir that should finally earn Paula Fox, a distinguished novelist and children's book writer, the audience she has for decades deserved<br><br>Paula Fox has long been acclaimed as one of America's most brilliant fiction writers. <i>Borrowed Finery</i>, her first book in nearly a decade, is an astonishing memoir of her highly unusual beginnings.<br><br>Born in the twenties to nomadic, bohemian parents, 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. How, Fox wonder, is this woman "enough of an organic being to have carried me in her belly"?<br><br>Never sharing more than a few moments with his daughter, Fox's father allows her to be shunted from New York City,...</br></br></br></br></br></br></p></p>