This is a really amazing book – it’s by someone anonymous who is better off that way because it’s a memoir AND fiction and who in the world could all this have happened to? Anyway, I loved it.

I finished this yesterday and wanted so badly to read it again with the Kindle version that … well, dear reader – I had to do it.

“The only way to be reliably sure that the hero gets the girl at the end of the story is to be both the hero and the girl yourself.”
pg 18

This is the story of an unnamed woman who is either losing everything or has lost it already, her husband, her young son, her job – maybe her dreams in addition to a good deal from her early years. But … she hasn’t lost love although that’s definitely starting to leak.

On a hunch and with some advice from a friend, she turns to developing the online persona she’s been playing with. She does this via social media and something clicks and it starts working on her.

Becoming Duchess Goldblatt is a lightly literary book in that there are lots and lots of literary allusions and, sweet for me, I was familiar with almost all of them, Celeste Ng, Lyle Lovett, and several others.

When people say they’re
“going to make time for you,”
it’s instant time from a mix.
Nobody bothers to creating new
time from scratch anymore.”
pg 165

From Audible:
Part memoir and part joyful romp through the fields of imagination, the story behind a beloved pseudonymous Twitter account reveals how a writer deep in grief rebuilt a life worth living.

Becoming Duchess Goldblatt is two stories: that of the reclusive real-life writer who created a fictional character out of loneliness and thin air, and that of the magical Duchess Goldblatt herself, a bright light in the darkness of social media. Fans around the world are drawn to Her Grace’s voice, her wit, her life-affirming love for all humanity, and the fun and friendship of the community that’s sprung up around her.

@DuchessGoldblat (81-year-old literary icon, author of An Axe to Grind) brought people together in her name: in bookstores, museums, concerts, and coffee shops, and along the way, brought real friends home – foremost among them, Lyle Lovett.