Borrowed Finery: A memoir

Paula Fox was an award-winning American author. Her works include books for both children an adults, including Desperate Characters, which was made into a film starring Shirley MacLaine.

In this fascinating book, Fox looks back on her childhood: abandoned by her parents, rescued by her Cuban grandmother, taken in by a poor Minister, and sent to live in Hollywood where she meets a range of celebrities including Buster Keaton, John Wayne, Orson Wells and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The book is an appraisal of just how much – and how little – a child needs to survive.

Paula is also the grandmother of Courtney Love, and her first child, whom she gave up for adoption, may or may not have been Marlon Brando’s love-child, but that doesn’t come into the book.