Our heroine, a moderately successful TV writer in L.A., wants her life to be as sunny and perfect as a Hollywood rom-com: a cool job, a wacky best friend, and lots of age-appropriate hot guys just dying to date her. Instead, she’s a self-described spinster who is swimming in anxiety and just might have a tiny little brain tumor. So she turns to an unlikely source for inspiration: the eighteenth-century novelist and diarist Frances Burney, who pretty much invented the chick-lit novel.
A semi-autobiographical unromantic comedy, The Spinster Diaries is a laugh-out-loud satire of both the TV business and the well-worn conventions of chick lit—as well as the true tale of the forgotten writer who inspired Jane Austen to greatness. It's an endearing and refreshingly honest testament to how one person’s life can reach out across the centuries to touch another’s.
Genre: Literary Fiction
A semi-autobiographical unromantic comedy, The Spinster Diaries is a laugh-out-loud satire of both the TV business and the well-worn conventions of chick lit—as well as the true tale of the forgotten writer who inspired Jane Austen to greatness. It's an endearing and refreshingly honest testament to how one person’s life can reach out across the centuries to touch another’s.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Witty, whip-smart and winning, Gina Fattore’s Spinster Diaries is a sheer delight. In her tale of an anxious TV writer who turns to the lessons gleaned from her favorite writer - eighteenth-century novelist Fanny Burney - to navigate a health scare and ensuing existential crisis, Fattore expertly carries us from droll humor to incisive cultural critique, from lively comedy to utter poignancy." - Megan Abbott
"Gina Fattore writes like the voice of your best friend in your head - that ideal friend whose unflagging support, self-effacing humor, painful honesty, easy rhythm, and bravery in all things great and small you want to turn to in times of distress. This is a rare and tricky feat only accomplished by the wittiest of writers. She also gets Hollywood exactly right. She sweats the small stuff hilariously, and gracefully handles the big stuff like the witty adult in the room. And the rooms she’s been in contain a serious shortage of adults. Like Carrie Fisher, Fattore is funny as hell and in love with words and curious things; she’s the quiet voice at the dinner party that you realize is also the smartest and funniest right around the time dessert appears. Once I realized she wasn’t going to write about me in The Spinster Diaries, I relaxed and really enjoyed it. But I then got disappointed that I wasn’t being subjected to her kind and ruthless gaze. Maybe in the sequel." - David Duchovny
"Gina Fattore’s tale of a TV writer stuck in showbiz purgatory is authentic, hilarious, and heartbreaking. Fattore serves as our herald into the capricious world of LA’s entertainment industry, introducing us to a few of its central tenets: GirlWorld, (where expensive shoes and juicy dating exploits are required passports), Journaling For Anxiety™ (necessary when you’re dealing with extensive script rewrites - oh, and being diagnosed with a brain tumor), and one giant passion project, a miniseries about the real-life English writer Frances Burney. Part social commentary, part confessional, part history lesson, Fattore’s book asks the big questions. Why are women who choose their own paths without partners labeled as 'spinsters'? If your brain tumor is benign, can you wait until hiatus to have it removed? And why do things always seem to work out in Woody Allen movies? I wish my diary was this much fun to read. Fattore’s writing shines brightly in this amazing debut." - Debbie Graber
"An utter delight from start to finish, Gina Fattore’s debut is one of those rarities?a comic novel that is actually laugh-out-loud funny. The Spinster Diaries is a heartfelt, hilarious, and addictively un-put-downable story of anxiety, ambition, and love (or learning to live without it) in 21st-century L.A. and 18th-century Britain." - Adam Langer
"In this delightfully ambivalent paean to contemporary spinsterhood, Gina Fattore unpacks and upends the conventions of romantic comedy in a voice both razor sharp and flat-out hilarious. I didn’t want it to end." - Antoine Wilson
"Gina Fattore writes like the voice of your best friend in your head - that ideal friend whose unflagging support, self-effacing humor, painful honesty, easy rhythm, and bravery in all things great and small you want to turn to in times of distress. This is a rare and tricky feat only accomplished by the wittiest of writers. She also gets Hollywood exactly right. She sweats the small stuff hilariously, and gracefully handles the big stuff like the witty adult in the room. And the rooms she’s been in contain a serious shortage of adults. Like Carrie Fisher, Fattore is funny as hell and in love with words and curious things; she’s the quiet voice at the dinner party that you realize is also the smartest and funniest right around the time dessert appears. Once I realized she wasn’t going to write about me in The Spinster Diaries, I relaxed and really enjoyed it. But I then got disappointed that I wasn’t being subjected to her kind and ruthless gaze. Maybe in the sequel." - David Duchovny
"Gina Fattore’s tale of a TV writer stuck in showbiz purgatory is authentic, hilarious, and heartbreaking. Fattore serves as our herald into the capricious world of LA’s entertainment industry, introducing us to a few of its central tenets: GirlWorld, (where expensive shoes and juicy dating exploits are required passports), Journaling For Anxiety™ (necessary when you’re dealing with extensive script rewrites - oh, and being diagnosed with a brain tumor), and one giant passion project, a miniseries about the real-life English writer Frances Burney. Part social commentary, part confessional, part history lesson, Fattore’s book asks the big questions. Why are women who choose their own paths without partners labeled as 'spinsters'? If your brain tumor is benign, can you wait until hiatus to have it removed? And why do things always seem to work out in Woody Allen movies? I wish my diary was this much fun to read. Fattore’s writing shines brightly in this amazing debut." - Debbie Graber
"An utter delight from start to finish, Gina Fattore’s debut is one of those rarities?a comic novel that is actually laugh-out-loud funny. The Spinster Diaries is a heartfelt, hilarious, and addictively un-put-downable story of anxiety, ambition, and love (or learning to live without it) in 21st-century L.A. and 18th-century Britain." - Adam Langer
"In this delightfully ambivalent paean to contemporary spinsterhood, Gina Fattore unpacks and upends the conventions of romantic comedy in a voice both razor sharp and flat-out hilarious. I didn’t want it to end." - Antoine Wilson
Visitors also looked at these books
Used availability for Gina Fattore's The Spinster Diaries