Now, as its cover notes, "A Major Motion Picture", this slim memoir serves as an excellent - and delightfully acid - complement to the fine work of Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant.
For those unfamiliar with the tale, it's a memoir by the biographer Lee Israel of her foray into the forgery of celebrity correspondence. At a low financial ebb after a disastrously rushed biography of Estée Lauder, Israel almost accidentally blunders into this secondary career. Initially through the selling of embellished letters, she ultimately creates them wholesale, for writers including Noel Coward and Dorothy Parker (after whom the book draws its title). With some attention to detail, including period typewriters plus solid impersonation, as well as the insertion of wicked details, her work becomes a money-spinner within the dubious world of celebrity memorabilia. Inevitably, after the rise comes the fall, but not before a highly enjoyable reveal of the tricks of the trade. Israel is absolutely unrepentant in her telling, which makes for a gleeful read, though one that lightly glosses over the straightened circumstances that led her to crime in the first place.
Viewers of the film might be a little annoyed to discover its changes to certain details of Israel's story (most obviously around a feline character), but I think it stands up well despite these minor tweaks. And I'd simply never have read and enjoyed this delicious takedown of the lucrative celebrity memorabilia market / minor meditation on "getting into character" if I hadn't seen the excellent film adaptation first.
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