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, bestselling author of Dare Me and You Will Know Me
“Fattore's lightning-fast prose shines… A humorous and heartfelt look at the expectations women have lived with, and triumphed over, across the centuries.”
— Kirkus
“Paying homage to women who self-actualize through their art, The Spinster Diaries focuses on two women separated by time who live out their beliefs… Gina’s story develops in tandem with Fanny’s. Both adopt The Spinster Way, prioritizing writing over the typical feminine protocol of marriage and children. Their relationships with their sisters highlight the importance of women’s friendships, while their resilience and humor are dominant and infectious. Fanny inspires Gina to maintain hope in the face of death, even as she herself outlives everyone she loves. The ending is unexpected and delightful.”
— Foreword
"So you have this book about a semi-alienated (okay almost completely alienated), perpetually unmarried Hollywood TV writer adrift in a world of L.A. lunacy and blondes in zillion-dollar shoes. Throw in the fact that she spends her idle moments obsessing about an eighteenth-century novelist whose heroines are actually a lot less interesting than she is. Throw in a brain tumor. Mix and splatter. What you have is a woman you root for who makes Bridget Jones seem like a boring cow and a book that makes you laugh and, well, not cry exactly, because she is resilient, decent as hell, and whip-smart, and it is such a special pleasure to watch her find her unique way of being in a world that doesn’t deserve her. Sign me up for the Gina Fattore fan club. I adore her."
— George Hodgman, author of Bettyville
“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, author of Crossing California and The Thieves of Manhattan
“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, actor and author of Holy Cow and Miss Subways
"Wouldn’t it be cool if ‘Gina Fattore’ was really the pseudonym I chose for my prose writing, and it was actually me who wrote this funny, emotional, expertly crafted novel, and it was me whose witty and original voice was so fresh and captivating? Well, a guy can dream."
— Greg Daniels, co-creator of such hit TV shows as The Office and Parks and Recreation
“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, author of Panorama City
“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, author of Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday
“TV writer Gina Fattore has penned this 'semi-autobiographical unromantic comedy' to shine a hilarious light on chick lit, the TV business and spinsterhood. If you need a laugh and want to support indie publishing during this time of uncertainty, this is the book for you.”
— Ms. Magazine
“Fattore's lightning-fast prose shines… A humorous and heartfelt look at the expectations women have lived with, and triumphed over, across the centuries.”
— Kirkus
"A satirical and heartfelt novel that touches on life in the TV business and the chick lit novels we all know and love.”
— Bookstr
“Paying homage to women who self-actualize through their art, The Spinster Diaries focuses on two women separated by time who live out their beliefs… Gina’s story develops in tandem with Fanny’s. Both adopt The Spinster Way, prioritizing writing over the typical feminine protocol of marriage and children. Their relationships with their sisters highlight the importance of women’s friendships, while their resilience and humor are dominant and infectious. Fanny inspires Gina to maintain hope in the face of death, even as she herself outlives everyone she loves. The ending is unexpected and delightful.”
— Foreword
2020-01-27
An anxious Hollywood writer journals about her obsession with 18th-century novelist Frances Burney to help make sense of her life as a self-declared spinster.
Written in a series of stream-of-consciousness diary entries, the novel follows an unnamed Hollywood writer in her late 30s who has recently been diagnosed with a benign brain tumor. She is anxiety-ridden over both her prognosis and her new TV-writing job alongside a bevy of 20-something women whom she considers part of a “GirlWorld” to which she has no entry (membership seems to be based mostly on the fact that they have a penchant for wearing $400 stilettos to work and have active social lives). In response, she takes up Journaling for Anxiety™ and focuses on writing a miniseries following the life of Frances Burney, Mother of English Fiction. The novel’s setting in 2006 does little to add to the reading experience and unnecessarily dates the text. Many modern readers will cringe at the heroine’s constant negative comments toward her own plus-size body and her continual insistence that she’s “not like other girls” as well as the repeated references to controversial director Woody Allen and his films. But Fattore’s lightning-fast prose shines when she spotlights the parallels between Burney’s life and that of her heroine—struggles with anxiety, lack of successful romantic relationships, career highs and lows—and in the moments of true self-reflection that break through the heroine’s daily malaise. When she eventually comes to the realization that the biggest difference between her early 20s and late 30s is that she’s lost a sense of hope, it’s easy to empathize with her fear that her best years are behind her.
A humorous and heartfelt look at the expectations women have lived with, and triumphed over, across the centuries.
