Imaginary Friends

By Nora Ephron

Book Overview

The bestselling author of I Feel Bad About My Neck brilliantly and hilariously resuscitates Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy--two bigger-than-life feuding writers--to give them a post-mortem second act, and the chance to really air their differences.

Although Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy probably only met once in their lives, their names will be linked forever in the history of American literary feuds: they were legendary enemies, especially after McCarthy famously announced to the world that every word Hellman wrote was a lie, "including 'and' and 'the.'" The public battle, and the legal squabbling, that ensued ended, unsatisfactorily for all, with Hellman's death.

"A sharp-eyed and even sharper-clawed memory-play.... Provides...guilty pleasures, keeping the repartee both snappy and snappish." --The Wall Street Journal

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400034221
• ISBN13: 9781400034222
• Release Date: March 2003
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.37 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Early Nora Ephron

i love anything written from Nora Ephron's point of view and this book provides some clues to how she got started. It is fun!

Better when seeing it...

You just don't get the feel of this extraordinary, unusual and unique play of Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman - two rival authors during the communist scare - from reading it. I was given the pleasure of seeing this incredible play starring Cherry Jones and Swoozie Kurts in its Broadway run. When the two authors meet in the afterlife, they tell their audience about their lives, beginning with their cleverly told childhoods and slowly moving forward to McCarthy's accusation of being a Communist and ending with Hellman's death before the trial was set by Hellman and McCarthy to discuss McCarthy's lies about Hellman's so-called memoirs. Still clever and still stunning, Ephron's play is an enjoyable read for McCarthy (THE GROUP) and Hellman (THE CHILDREN'S HOUR) fans.