The Impostor's Daughter: A True Memoir

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Review:

Review:

Review:

Review:

About the Author

What Our Readers Are Saying

Add a comment for a chance to win!

Average customer rating based on 3 comments:

Shoshana, January 9, 2010 (view all comments by Shoshana)
I notice this book because the cover was bright and interesting, and because it was in the graphic novels section and the subtitle is "A True Memoir." "True" is inserted with a caret, so I knew that truth and memory would be an issue. Given the cover illustration, in which Sandell depicts herself with face obscured by a photo of her father, it seemed that identity would be a focus as well. I flipped through the book. The appealing interior illustrations are also brightly colored in the palate of the dust jacket. They were engaging and the lettering was easy to read. The flap promised a good story.

The Impostor's Daughter is about Sandell's father and his profound effects on her life. Sandell does a terrific job of representing her passionate, larger-than-life father and herself as an adoring child. Over time, odd things happen and discrepancies creep in. Just as Jeannette Walls so eloquently described the crumbling of a child's idealization of her parents in The Glass Castle, so Sandell shows the reader the erosion of her trust in her father's professed life story. As the evidence mounts that he is not what he says he is, Sandell moves from passive discovery to active uncovering, investigating the "facts" of her father's life and finding them at best grandiosely distorted; at worst, fabricated. The article she wrote about this process is available at Esquire (but read it after you read the book). This story of disillusionment co-occurs and intersects with her own adult development, where telling her father's stories stands in for telling her own stories, where her romantic relationships are ambivalent, and where she must eventually come to terms with her growing addiction to Ambien.

I'd have wished for a last panel that didn't show Sandell beginning to write the book, but this is a minor complaint.

Read The Impostor's Daughter with The Glass Castle, or with other graphic memoirs such as Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, and Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers for an interesting range of graphic styles and subjects.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(1 of 1 readers found this comment helpful)

report this comment

Holly Ord, November 19, 2009 (view all comments by Holly Ord)
I could not stop reading The Imposter’s Daughter. I opened it, started reading and did not put it down until the next morning, when I was completely finished. I have read the book twice, both times taking me no more than two sittings and during the first time, I actually carried it with me to the bathroom a few times. It is a story that has yet to get old and I definitely foresee myself reading it again–It is that good. I really respect the course that Laurie Sandell has taken in her life, whether it be good, bad or destructive because she did wind up on her feet and rebuilding an impressive professional career. She had the nerve to air her family’s dirty laundry not because she wanted to have something over her father, but because her story is one that needed to be told and was a pleasure to experience however briefly and she did it successfully, with wit and honesty.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(3 of 5 readers found this comment helpful)

report this comment

gaby317, July 18, 2009 (view all comments by gaby317)
Synopsis:

The Imposter's Daughter: A True Memoir is described as a "graphic memoir" because the cartoons are supposed to be largely nonfiction. The work is divided into two main parts. In Part One of The Imposter's Daughter, we follow Laurie Sandell from her childhood hero worship of her father through the slow discovery of his lies and deception to how this experience shaped Laurie's early adult years. Charismatic, good looking and confident, Laurie knew her father to be a former green beret with a law degree from NYU and a PhD from Columbia University who served as an economist and advisor to Henry Kissinger and had grown up with fabulous wealth in Argentina. He was larger than life and full of exciting stories of his past, his teaching career, and the businesses that he was working on. As the eldest and his favorite child, they shared a special bond. But after her father left the post as an economics professor, he spent his time at home and became increasingly paranoid, eccentric controlling. As his life unravelled, so did their closeness. It wasn't until after college and when she was applying for her first credit card that Laurie discovered that her father had taken out credit cards and thousands of dollars of debt in her name. Justifiably upset, she contacted her family - and they learn that he'd taken out credit cards and loans under all of their names. Their house is nearly lost from under them. Laurie's life is fluid and she decides to spend the next four years exploring the world. She travels to Israel, Japan, Jordan, Paris, Egypt, Mexico, and Thailand, undoubtedly breaking hearts while experimenting. She works as a stripper in Tokyo, seduces lesbian women in Israel, and grows addicted to presciption drugs. Laurie returns to America and works as a secretary by day while researching and writing about her father's deceptions at night. Part One ends with the publication of Laurie's article "My Father, the Fraud" in Esquire Magazine.

In Part Two, Laurie starts work at a popular woman's magazine where she excels at celebrity interviews and builds her reputation. She discovers that she has a gift for building relationships with celebrities - "most of them lived in emotional castles surrounded by moats, and I'd been building a tower around myself for thirty-two years." While she builds her professional life, Laurie slowly becomes addicted to prescription drugs. Although her relationship with her father and family deteriorates, but Laurie continues digging into her father's past. Reaching out to distant acquaintances, strangers, and estranged family, Laurie slowly pieces together her father's life.

Review:

I had intended to just glance through the book and somehow read it all in one sitting. The first surprise was that the entire work is a graphic memoir - a "nonfiction cartoon" written and illustrated by Laurie Sandell. The book is beautifully done - from the cover and the drawings to the writing and pacing. It worked together so well that I find it hard to believe the story is true, although it likely is, after all it's even called The Imposter's Daughter: A True Memoir. Warning: some of the graphics are explicit. The book targets an adult audience.

This as a fun summer read. I'm looking forward to more of Laurie Sandell's work in the future.

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (July 29, 2009), 256 pages. The book will be available on July 29, 2009 but can be ordered in advance through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Powells.

Courtesy of Hatchette Books Group.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(4 of 8 readers found this comment helpful)

report this comment

View all 3 comments

Product Details

ISBN:

9780316033053

Author:

Sandell, Laurie

Publisher:

Little Brown and Company

Subject:

Journalists

Subject:

United states

Subject:

General

Subject:

Personal Memoirs

Subject:

Graphic Novels

Subject:

Journalists -- United States.

Copyright:

2009

Publication Date:

July 2009

Binding:

Hardcover

Language:

English

Illustrations:

Y

Pages:

247

Dimensions:

9.56x6.46x1.16 in. 1.59 lbs.