"A nomad I will remain for life, in love with distant and uncharted places." -Isabelle Eberhardt
"A nomad I will remain for life, in love with distant and uncharted places." -Isabelle Eberhardt
While home for Thanksgiving my mom, sister and I decided to partake in a very non-traditional day. We saw back to back movies and then we hoped to go to sushi but all the sushi places were closed so we ended up at Ruby Tuesday of all places! (Soft pretzels for the win.) My mom was a good citizen and she paid for both movies ahead of time. I was hoping to have some Thanksgiving adventure and sneak from one movie to the next but alas, it was not in my cards. Probably for the best. We did sneak in some Frito’s corn chips and bean dip though. That was pretty epic.
Anyway! The movies we saw were Instant Family (cute) and Can You Ever Forgive Me? starring Melissa McCarthy. McCarthy plays author Lee Israel who wrote a memoir of the same name. I had never heard of this book nor the author Lee Israel prior to Thanksgiving. Israel was a biographer who wrote the stories of Estee Lauder, Dorothy Kilgallen and Miss Tallulah Bankhead in the 1970s and 1980s. In the movie Israel is working on a biography of Fanny Brice, a model, comedian, singer and actor from the 1930s to the 1950s. Brice is the title character in Funny Girl , herself being portrayed by Barbara Steisand. Israel had a talent for writing about obscure women, which is why she was forced into her brief criminal career of a literary forger, forging letters from Dorothy Parker, Katharine Hepburn and Noel Coward.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? is funny in a cutting sort of way and tragic all at once and Melissa McCarthy does a great job balancing the two. Richard E. Grant, who plays Israel’s friend and co-conspirator, steals the show as Jack Hock. I don’t usually like to read a book after seeing the movie but in this case I think I’m going to give it a try. I’m hoping maybe with a memoir the experience will be better, although I am not sure why that would make a difference.
The post Can You Ever Forgive Me? appeared first on The Book Nomad.
