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Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright
Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright | Jean Nathan
3 posts | 8 read | 8 to read
In 1957, a children's book called "The Lonely Doll" was published. With its pink-and-white-checked cover and photographs featuring a wide-eyed doll, it captured the imaginations of young girls and made the author, Dare Wright, a household name. Close to forty years after its publication, the book was out of print but not forgotten. When the cover image inexplicably came to journalist Jean Nathan one afternoon, she went in search of the book--and ultimately its author. Nathan found Dare Wright living out her last days in a decrepit public hospital in Queens, New York. Over the next five years, Nathan pieced together Dare Wright's bizarre life of glamour and painful isolation to create this mesmerizing biography of a woman who struggled to escape the imprisonment of her childhood through her art.
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RealBooks4ever
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Dare Wright had a strange #life . #JuneBookBugs

CherylDeFranceschi I thought this book was so, so sad. 7y
RealBooks4ever @CherylDeFranceschi Yes, she had a troubled life. 7y
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AmandaL
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My heart is broken. This was a fascinating, devastating, glamorous, ridiculous, bewildering, and heartbreaking biography of a woman whose books have beguiled little girls since the 1950s.

ValerieAndBooks I have never heard of, or read (that I know of) the series or about the author but it sounds so fascinating that I have to add this to the TBR! 8y
AmandaL I can't wait to hear what you think! 8y
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CherylDeFranceschi
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This book was heartbreaking! Dare Wright was the force behind the Lonely Doll books. Most women I talk to are strangely ambivalent about these books- they seem to cause delight and unease in equal measure. This story is fascinating and heartbreaking in its' strangeness. Poor Edith. Poor Dare.

shawnmooney The plot summary was so gripping I stopped reading halfway through. Must read this!!! 8y
CherylDeFranceschi @shawnmooney It is fascinating in a Grey Gardens way. It's sad and lurid and human and heartbreaking. 8y
Imagineannie Oh, man I still have my Edith books and I always thought they were weird. I remember asking my mom why that little girl lived with bears, and was she a real girl or a doll, and...thank you! 8y
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bookloversnevergotobedalone I grew up with her books, my aunt who was a doll collector gave them to my sisters and I, we loved them. So when I came upon this book I had to read it and wow, it put a whole new spin on her books. 8y
CherylDeFranceschi @Imagineannie You're welcome! I gave them all to my daughter, as my mother gave them to me. But, yeah, kinda weird. 8y
CherylDeFranceschi @bookloversnevergotobedalone I know. I couldn't stop reading it once I started. I remember walking down Sheridan street with my face stuck in the book while I walked and cars whizzing by. 8y
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