Can You Ever Forgive Me? Memoirs of a Literary Forger

Amazon Best of the Month, August 2008: If David Carr's voluminous, well-documented Night of the Gun is the Warren Report of apologetic memoirs, Lee Israel's Can You Ever Forgive Me? is its cheeky, slim opposite. Barely repentant and witheringly funny, Israel recalls her short life of literary crime as, first, the forger of signed letters by such personages as Dorothy Parker, Noel Coward, and Louise Brooks, and then, more desperately, an out-and-out thief of such documents, all for resale to dealers and collectors. She has nearly as much fun telling her story as she did as a forger, and she proudly includes many examples of her handiwork (two of her Coward fakes passed muster enough to be included in the authoritative Letters of Noel Coward). Reading her memoir, it's no surprise she could take on the roles of these legendary wits; she's a master of the cutting, brilliant observation that made her subjects famous (her portrait of her hapless criminal partner is vicious and priceless). No doubt they would have found her an excellent correspondent. --Tom Nissley