Dear Digby [Hardcover]

Carol Muske Dukes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 18, 1989

book

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This silly, sentimental valentine of a book is saved by Dukes's natural flair for comedy. Willis Jane Digby is the letters editor of SISTERHOOD magazine (known as SIS ), a sort of liberated Ladies' Home Journal . Most of the letters she receives are the humdrum, run-of-the-mill kind, but there are some that Digby--whose wacky sense of humor has her sitting behind her desk wearing a tuxedo and rabbit ears--can't resist answering. She prints the weirdest ones in her bi-monthly column. Correspondents include Dino Pedrelli, a short, horny man who threatens to rape the staff; a creepy guy who signs himself "The Watcher" and who seems to follow her every move; and Iris Moss, a patient at a mental institute where, she claims, she's being sexually assaulted. Digby takes Iris's letters seriously and notifies the local paper, which discovers a massive cover-up of a longstanding practice of sexual abuse. There are various subplots too: Digby's faltering marriage, her unresolved feelings about her father and her involvement in the shooting death of a childhood friend. All these strings are tied together at the end when Digby learns that women--and perhaps men--are "anarchists for love."
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Though Willis Digby, letters editor for the feminist journal Sisterhood (SIS), sometimes wears a tux and rabbit ears to work, she's not crazy. She claims this get-up sensitizes her to the silent pleas of some of her correspondents, with whom she becomes personally involved. Her relationship with Iris, a 35-year-old mental hospital inmate, eventually becomes a lifesaving friendship; a flippant response to "The Watcher" leads to a dangerous encounter; and a romp in Central Park with members of WITCH (Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy) lends humor to this tale of one woman's campaign to protect the vulnerable from so-called sane members of society. In so doing, Digby uncovers the truth about a traumatic incident in her own childhood which haunts her still. Funny, sad, and highly recommended. See LJ 's "First Novelists," p. 41.
- Marion Hanscom, SUNY at Binghamton Lib.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition edition (April 18, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670825069
• ISBN-13: 978-0670825066
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,300,071 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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