Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Memoirs of a Literary Forger

"Lee Israel is deft, funny and eminently entertaining...She also has a good tale to tell. "Can You Ever Forgive Me?" offers a gentle parable about the modern culture of fame, about those who worship it, those who strive for it and those who trade in its relics." -- Jonathan Lopez, "The Associated Press"

"Israel displayed an excellent ear and fine false turn of phrase...Now, all these years later, she's written a slender, sordid and pretty damned fabulous book about her misadventures...There's no honor in anything she did, but after reading Can You Ever Forgive Me? it's hard to resist admitting Israel to the company of such sharp, gallant characters as Dawn Powell and Helene Hanff, women clinging to New York literary life, or its fringes, by their talented fingernails." -- Thomas Mallon, "The New York Times Book Review"

"With her witty, jeweled prose and her troubling antics, literary outlaw and minx Lee Israel is once again causing a ruckus. Do I trust her and her admission of guilt? Do I condone her actions? I'm loving the experience of trying to answer these questions." -- Henry Alford, investigative humorist, author of "Big Kiss, Municipal Bondage, " and contributing editor to "Vanity Fair"

"Whether she's writing about being banned from the Strand bookstore or stealing authentic letters from university libraries, she does so with honesty and a rapier wit. And in an age of promiscuous apology for the slightest wrongdoing, the fact that Israel never fully apologizes for her crimes is actually part of the charm of her memoir." -- VeryShortList

A candid memoir describes how a down-on-her-luck writer conceived of and successfully executed for nearly two years a remarkable forgery caper in which she used her talent as a researcher and celebrity biographer to forge more than three hundred letters by such literary notables as Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, Lillian Hellman, Noel Coward, and others. 75,000 first printing.