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All the Lives I Want

Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers

Contributors

By Alana Massey

Formats and Prices

Price

$9.99

Price

$12.99 CAD

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around February 7, 2017. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

“Alana Massey’s prose is to brutal honesty what a mandolin is to a butter knife: she’s sharper; she slices thinner; she shows the cross-section of a truth so deftly–so powerfully and cannily–it’s hard to look away, and hard not to feel that something has shifted in you for having read her.” — Leslie Jamison, New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy Exams From columnist and critic Alana Massey, a collection of essays examining the intersection of the personal with pop culture through the lives of pivotal female figures–from Sylvia Plath to Britney Spears–in the spirit of Chuck Klosterman, with the heart of a true fan. Mixing Didion’s affected cool with moments of giddy celebrity worship, Massey examines the lives of the women who reflect our greatest aspirations and darkest fears back onto us. These essays are personal without being confessional and clever in a way that invites readers into the joke. A cultural critique and a finely wrought fan letter, interwoven with stories that are achingly personal, All the Lives I Want is also an exploration of mental illness, the sex industry, and the dangers of loving too hard. But it is, above all, a paean to the celebrities who have shaped a generation of women–from Scarlett Johansson to Amber Rose, Lil’ Kim, Anjelica Huston, Lana Del Rey, Anna Nicole Smith and many more. These reflections aim to reimagine these women’s legacies, and in the process, teach us new ways of forgiving ourselves.

On Sale
Feb 7, 2017
Page Count
256 pages
ISBN-13
9781455565870

Alana Massey

About the Author

Alana Massey is a writer whose work covers culture, identity, vice and virtue. Her essays, criticism, and reporting have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, New York Magazine, Elle, The Atlantic, and more. Her first book All the Lives I Want was published in 2017 by Grand Central Publishing.

Learn more about this author