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Mar 02, 2009

Jessica rated it:

This biography of Dare Wright had a lot of flaws, but a year later the story's still imprinted in my generally flaky memory, and I can't deny that I sat down and inadvertently read the whole thing in one sitting, sooooo.... The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll is definitely a four-star book. I don't think Jean Nathan's the greatest biographer who's ever lived, and I felt her pop-Freudian analysis of Wright left a lot to be desired (okay, it annoyed the crap out of me, though that's a personal pet More...

8 comments like (13 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2011

Tosh rated it:

I love this book and I love Dare Wright. Even her name is great. Dare was a beautiful model who did a series of children books called "The Lonely Doll," where she photographed and wrote the narrative of this ugly little doll and her other doll friends. At one time it was thought to be charming, but looking at the books now they are truly hidious and scary.

The story of Dare Wright is truly an American Gothic tale, with a mother very close to her daughter (Dare Wright) and t More...

3 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

Stephanie rated it:

Stumbling across this biography triggered a distant but happy memory of Dare Wright 's Lonely Doll books. Those stories were so precious to me. Not knowing what had become of Wright, I automatically snapped it up. It proved one of the best impulse buys I've ever made. Dare Wright led a fascinating life as an artist, photographer, and writer. Her demise was tragic but not shocking, given the fact she was virtually all alone toward the end of her life.

My favorite part of this book is t More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 05, 2009

Trish rated it:

This isn't my usual reading fare. I guess I can see why it might be interesting. Frankly, I felt a voyeur and found myself wondering how I got here. I felt sad for this beautiful, stylish, and artistically talented young woman who appeared to lack the instinct to live and love. The corrosive influence of a domineering mother may have kept Dare Wright from sexually maturing. I got the impression that Dare had only an inkling of how sex makes the world revolve on its axis. She knew sex was importa More...

5 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 11, 2008

Maritess rated it:

GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY

One of the most original books I've ever read. Really sick and amazing.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 18, 2008

Callie rated it:

I can't believe I had not heard more about this book before!
It really seems like one that snuck under the radar. Oh my freaking god is what I kept wanting to shout out loud as it kept me up, reading page after page some nights past three in the morning. You are immediately drawn into the wacky lives of two women- the shy, ethereal, bizarre & gorgeous author of The Lonely Doll (also model/actress/artist), Dare Wright, and her crazier, eccentric artist mother, heavily painted faced Edie Wri More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

Sarah rated it:

Oh dear God this book is awesome. It's about Dare Wright, who wrote and illustrated these children's books in the 1950s- they featured a doll, of course, and photos taken by Dare of the creepy doll in various (some pretty risque) poses, i.e. the doll tied to a tree, being spanked, etc. So she was a lonely never married recluse (at the end of her life) that lived in a massive Manhattan apartment. She lived with her mother for years and they had a really strange almost incestual relationship. Dit More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 08, 2011

Laurel rated it:

The reportage and the story itself are a five. The writing doesn't quite live up to that for me. But most of all, I'm interested in whether other people who read this felt that there might be more to the story... I can't help feeling like Nathan led us to the edge of an assumption (don't want to spoil it here) about Dare's sexuality, or something... ahem.

But then she didn't deliver any assumptions (or proof) herself.

Interesting.

I wonder what she knew and didn't s More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 13, 2009

Carrie rated it:

Wow – this is a weird book. Not, despite the title, a young adult book, but rather the biography of a woman who wrote a number of bizarre children’s books between 1957 to 1981, the most famous of which was called The Lonely Doll. I wasn’t familiar with her children’s books when I was young, but I glanced at The Lonely Doll when I bought this paperback. It tells the story, all through posed, black and white photographs, of Edith, a little doll who lives alone in a fabulous apartment. She is miser More...

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Jan 02, 2008

Suede rated it:

I'm not so sure if this book really deserves 5 stars, but it was just SO CREEPY that I threw an extra star in there. I mean, Dare looks exactly like Edith, the Lonely Doll. And the Lonley Doll is named after her MOTHER. The mother that she slept beside when she was an adult, after an all day session of playing dress up. And she was in love (as in, I wanna marry you love) with her brother - and i can see why, HOTTIE! And she was raped by a hobo. Tragic, true, but you can't make this stuff up More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 26, 2010

Kate rated it:

My daughter used to tell me, while we watched "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" on TV, that, "It's the mother who did it. It's always the mother."

In this book, it's definitely the mother. The mother, a portrait artist who wants to be one of the rich and famous, keeps her daughter near her always, plays dress-up with her (even as the daughter is in her 50s), and blames the father and son for all their problems, without any inkling or acceptance she could share More...

0 comments like

Dec 23, 2009

Terry rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

Nov 05, 2009

karen rated it:

so it is now biography month. i think i expected something more tragic and explosive than this. instead, it is as tragically funny as watching grey gardens - maybe a little sadder. mothers and their daughters should not spend this much time together. everyone knows that. much like three or four women cannot be around each other without spontaneously engaging in lesbian pillow fight action, mothers and daughters living together their whole lives leads to emotional claustrophobia and, eventually, More...

8 comments like (22 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2008

Katie rated it:

Man, apparently I'm the only one who didn't like this book. This rating is not to discredit the life or works of Dare, because I think she was obviously a very talented, beautiful, mystical, yet tortured woman (and that's why I bumped it to two stars), but to say that I just didn't enjoy reading this book at all.

First, I want to give some HUGE credit to Jean Nathan for her research on Dare Wright. As she wrote, there was very little prior info. on Ms. Wright available other than a f More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 07, 2010

Chana rated it:

A book for the voyeur, for those readers who like to read true stories of other people's troubled lives. This is the story of Dare Wright, the author of the Lonely Doll series. I actually don't recall these books although I was of the right generation of little girls to be reading them. I kind of wish I did have a memory of them from when I was a child so I could make a comparison to an adult opinion of them. There is quite the idea that these books are really a disturbing autobiographical p More...

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Mar 28, 2009

Katherine rated it:

Ick.

I cannot separate my feelings for this book from my general distaste for the original Lonely Doll books, which I found creepy even as a child.

Though the author has done a thorough job, I found her writing to be a distant and uninvolving. The book is full of all sorts of appalling material (and nude photos of the subject--wish I'd know that before I started reading it in a train station!), but it started to feel like a laundry list--"and then Edie made Dare do th More...

0 comments like

Nov 23, 2011

Sara rated it:

I also read the Lonely Doll books as a child, and found them both fascinating and disturbing. I had forgotten all about them until, at the tender age of 57, they popped back up into my consciousness for some reason. Not remembering the titles of the books or the author's name (if I ever knew it to begin with), I Googled "children's book doll and bears" and came up with Dare Wright and was amazed to discover all the other people who had been as influenced by the books as I had. In fact, More...

0 comments like

Jan 05, 2009

Christine rated it:

I was one of those little girls who was entranced by the dress-up scene in The Lonely Doll. Even at a young age, I understood that every little girl must psychically go through her own emotional "house" and find that secret, hidden bastion of femininity. I remember being entranced too by the beautiful photo of blonde, ponytailed Dare Wright on the dust jacket. It's sad that the period when I was reading that book was the same period she was falling apart after losing her mother.
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0 comments like

Aug 12, 2010

Carrie rated it:

I evidently read "The Lonely Doll" at some point during my childhood, because many years ago I saw a used copy and thought to myself, "That's the creepy book with the spanking teddy bear!" Obviously it left an impression at some point in my younger days.

A few years ago I heard the author of this biography on NPR and was riveted by her story of an admittedly strange, glamorous woman who posed dolls and teddy bears for picture books -- not obscure books, although mo More...

0 comments like

Jul 05, 2008

emilie rated it:

Dare Wright truly deserved to be written about posthumously. A virgin seductress model photographer who created elaborate scenes with dolls and made them into children's stories. This book is very well written and interesting from start to finish.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 04, 2012

Josephine rated it:

What a strange life some people lead? Was Wright childlike or stunted emotionally? unusually close to her mother or tied inextricably to her mother's girdle strings? I suppose that Dare Wright's is not the strangest life out there, but not one I would have cared to lead. Jean Nathan, like many girls, read Wright's The Lonely Doll when herself a child, forgot it for years but when the memory of a pink gingham book with a doll (or was it a real girl?) swam back up from long lost childhood, she det More...

0 comments like

Mar 10, 2008

Tracey rated it:

Quickie review: hopefully more detailed review to come later.
A fascinating biography of a woman-child who explored her self and situation through photography and children's stories.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

Holly rated it:

i really liked this book. it could be bundled up with the "grey gardens" documentary in a care package addressed to britney spears.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

Robin rated it:

I had been haunted by The Lonely Doll book as a child. This background story was the perfect closure.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 25, 2011

Tia rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Jan 22, 2012

Jean rated it:

A friend I was staying with on Ocracoke, NC, gave me this biography of the author of an odd children's book called "The Lonely Doll." Dare spent a lot of time on the island years ago. For that, the book was interesting, but it was Dare's life my friend and I found riveting. It would be a great bookclub read, in that much of the book lays in the reader's (and writer's) take on Dare.

I didn't find Dare's life "creepy" as many here do. I doubt Nathan did, either. Nor More...

0 comments like

Aug 12, 2011

Cherise rated it:

One of the better books I've read in a long while . Highly recommended .
The mere premise of the book related to something in my inner being . The author has a childhood memory sparked one day and pursues her curiosity . It leads her on a quest to find a children's book , what comes of it is nothing short of inner fulfillment , a deep sense of coming full circle . She not only obtains a copy of the book that started it all , but indulges herself further into the entangling life of the book's More...

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Aug 22, 2009

Jenn rated it:

I rarely give 5 stars to anything but this bio is unlike anything I have read.

Dare Wright is the author of the Lonely Doll series as well as other childrens books. From childhood until death, Dare was consumed with an unnatural attachment to her mother, Edie. Rarely separated from each other (and when they were they were depressed about it) they often slept in the same bed together. Edie, a famous portrait painter, painted Dare over and over again while Dare often photographed her m More...

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Aug 23, 2008

Jackie "the Librarian" rated it:

I don't know if you remember the Lonely Doll books. Bordered in pink checkerboard, and illustrated with black and white photos of the doll and her adventures, the first book was about a lonely little girl doll named Edith, who had a lovely home, but nobody to live with her. She finds a family when two bears, Mr. Bear and his son, appear in her garden.

I found the story a bit creepy, as Edith gets in trouble for dressing up and writing "Mr. Bear is a silly old thing" in lips More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 20, 2008

Paul rated it:

I suppose it's very hard to write a biography about a person who nobody ever got to know. The only thing to do is to stock it full of minute details in lieu of actual warmth, and that's mostly what this book is about. If you want to really know Dare Wright as a person, the only true method is to read this book in conjunction with the books Dare herself wrote. This book serves mostly as footnotes explaining the meaning behind Dare's creepy (and for me, now even creepier) children's books.
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0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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