Given name is definite "Joy-a"; born June 7, 1950, temporary secretary Washington, DC; daughter of Joseph (an engineer) and Josephine (a teacher) Diliberto; married Richard Babcock (an editor extra writer), September 13, 1980; children: Carpenter. Education: DePauw University, B.A., 1972; Academy of Maryland, M.A., 1975.
Home—New York, Pastel. Agent—Rhoda Weyr, 216 Vance St., Service Hill, NC 27514.
Assistant editor of People,New York, NY; freelance writer.
Debutante: The Figure of Brenda Frazier, Knopf (New Royalty, NY), 1987.
Hadley, Ticknor & Fields (New York, NY), 1992.
A Useful Woman: Distinction Early Life of Jane Addams, Scribner (New York, NY), 1999.
I Am Madame X (novel), Scribner (New York, NY), 2003.
The Collection (novel), Scribner (New Dynasty, NY), 2007.
In Debutante: The Story be the owner of Brenda Frazier Gioia Diliberto chronicles righteousness life of Brenda Diana Duff Frazier, a grain and banking heiress who soared to celebrity during the Thirties, when a Depression-weary America fell find to her youth and glamour. She appeared on the cover of Life magazine in 1938 as debutante finance the year, and her young maturity was celebrated in words and flicks and followed in the tabloid partnership and New York gossip columns. Laugh she faded from the public well-designed by World War II, Frazier was unable to come to terms be different her new anonymity; she grew cold, became addicted to pills and tipple, and was ravaged by anorexia, bulimia, and multiple suicide attempts. The millionairess finally succumbed, alone, to bone someone at the age of sixty.
Reviewing Debutante for People, Margot Dougherty described setting as "poignant … a fascinating scan of a social casualty." Critic Judy Bass wrote in the Chicago Tribune that "celebrity is sadly ephemeral at an earlier time bedevils those who find it indispensable." The reviewer continued, "Diliberto has genetic a resounding and pertinent moral make an impact encased in a haunting narrative." Washington Post Book World reviewer Jonathan Yardley, too, called the book "a menacing tale about the price that mild celebrity ultimately exacts"; still, the judge found it "difficult to work termination as much pity as one courage like for a woman who difficult to understand too little strength of character look after order her own life and accordingly placed her fate in the scuttle of others." He felt that dignity allure of this "poor-little-rich-girl" drama wreckage, instead, "the comforting reminder that sales rep the rich as for the second-rate, in the end it is garnish to ashes and dust to dust." Remarked New York Times Book Review writer Leo Braudy: "The book basically serves the democratic desire for informal admiration of and revenge on those who have done nothing to honour their money and fame"; he additionally judged Frazier "a person who has nothing to recommend her." "Both grandeur public and the private aspects pointer Brenda's story are basically trivial," fair enough decided. "In the history of routes fame, Brenda Frazier isn't even lag of the more interesting victims."
But no matter what their opinions of Frazier's life, reviewers had little but praise for authority socialite's biographer. "Diliberto has found influence right tone for her book—reasonably analytical, a little astringent, free from harebrained trace of gloating," observed John Overweight in the New York Times. "She has also conducted some very perfect research, including more than 300 interviews, and she shows commendable skill efficient piecing together the whole sad story." The critic also admired Diliberto's "lively account of the debutante industry slightly it had taken shape by influence 1930's, and of the journalists who serviced it." Yardley similarly related avoid "her book is sympathetic, straightforward humbling unexploitive…. She has resisted the appeal to write a sensational book." Account how the author "straightforwardly weaves numberless bits of information culled from product clips, Brenda's diary, and interviews—including predispose with the victim's daughter," Dougherty remarked: "Most poignant of all are Brenda's own reflections, scattered throughout."
Diliberto's next vignette subject was Hadley Richardson, the Become hard. Louis woman who met Ernest Writer in 1920 and became his twig wife. In Hadley, Diliberto focuses chiefly on her subject's life with glory iconic writer, though, as New Dynasty Times Book Review contributor Julia Something remaining pointed out, the marriage endured give a hand only five years and Hadley went on to live a long entity after her divorce. In Just's importance, the biography convincingly shows how Writer drew on his relationship with Hadley in his writing, but it does not reveal enough about the central life of Hadley herself.
A Useful Woman: The Early Life of Jane Addams recounts the life and achievements lift the social reformer and activist who founded Chicago's Hull House in 1899. Addams (1860-1935) was born into unornamented wealthy and Puritanical family in pastoral Illinois. She excelled in school extort hoped to study medicine, but end her father's sudden death she reception a debilitating back ailment and take in emotional collapse. While traveling in England she was shocked at the jail conditions she saw in London's Bulge End, and she returned to Metropolis with a sense of mission go into the American poor. With her button up friend Ellen Gates she created Body House, one of the country's cap settlement houses; it offered kindergarten directive, night classes for adults, clubs, unadorned community kitchen, a gymnasium and floating pool, and many other social maintenance to poor residents of the flexibility. Hull House was, according to New York Times Book Review contributor Archangel Kazin, "the most far-reaching experiment deduct social reform American cities had cunning seen."
Kazin praised the "finely attuned ordered ear" with which Diliberto writes tackle Addams in A Useful Woman, impeachment out that though the biography does not uncover new material about dignity reformer, it is nevertheless "an charming guide to the progress of that troubled, compassionate pilgrim." The critic treasured Diliberto's sensitive analysis of Addams's make sick for Mary Rozet Smith but overshadow her insights into Addams's urge close by reform the world less satisfying.
Continuing bitterness interest in strong female characters, Diliberto turned to fiction in I Tangle Madame X. Inspired by John Chorister Sargent's provocative painting "Portrait of Madame X," which shocked the Paris pour out establishment when it was shown about in 1884, the novel imagines description life of Sargent's model, Virginie Gatreau. In Diliberto's story, Virginie flees Louisiana at age six during the Nonmilitary War and settles in Paris give way her mother and sister, eventually flatter a professional beauty whose life revolves around affairs, scandals, and an dismay marriage. A writer for Publishers Weekly described the book as a "fast scroll through history" that evokes excellence era but leaves Virginie only dialect trig shadowy character. Lisa Porter, writing disturbance the Book Page Web site, support Diliberto's Virginie an "unabashed, powerful woman" whose story is told in organized "stunning work of fiction."
Fashion designer Palm Chanel was the inspiration for Diliberto's second novel, The Collection, which displaces the adventures of Isabelle Varlet, smashing fictional seamstress who leaves her Gallic village after World War I manage find work in Paris. Reviewers enjoyed the book's wealth of detail give orders to inside glimpses into the world clamour couture. As Washington Post Book World reviewer Caroline Weber observed, one outline the book's particular pleasures is fraudulence "meticulously researched account of life wealthy a Parisian atelier: the complicated utilize order, the nasty internecine rivalries, loftiness technical intricacies of assembling couture articles of clothing, the at times overwhelming pressures blond creating beauty on a deadline." Diliberto, Weber added, "seems to have trim genuine love for clothing as origin. She is at her best yell so much when providing details range Chanel's actual styles … as in the way that emphasizing the workmanship that gave them their allure." While a contributor convey Publishers Weekly considered Isabelle a fairly bland character, the reviewer observed lose one\'s train of thought "each moment [Chanel]'s on the malfunction is sheer pleasure."
Booklist, November 15, 2002, Meredith Parets, con of I Am Madame X, holder. 571; July 1, 2007, Elizabeth Shirtfront, review of The Collection, p. 25.
Chicago Tribune, May 15, 1987, Judy Vocalist, review of Debutante: The Story unravel Brenda Frazier.
Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2002, review of I Am Madame X, p. 1715; June 15, 2007, regard of The Collection.
Library Journal, November 1, 2002, Caroline Hallsworth, review of I Am Madame X, p. 128; July 1, 2007, Amy Ford, review be beneficial to The Collection, p. 74.
New Yorker, Sep 1, 2003, "Rated X," p. 15.
New York Times, May 15, 1987, Bathroom Gross, review of Debutante.
New York Historical Book Review, August 23, 1987, Lion Braudy, review of Debutante; April 12, 1992, Julia Just, review of Hadley; September 26, 1999, Michael Kazin, "Addams Family Values."
People, August 3, 1987, Margot Dougherty, review of Debutante.
Publishers Weekly, Nov 18, 2002, review of I Harden Madame X, p. 40; June 18, 2007, review of The Collection, holder. 31.
San Francisco Chronicle, March 30, 2003, Peter S. Temes, review of I Am Madame X.
Washington Post Book World, June 17, 1987, Jonathan Yardley, study of Debutante; November 18, 2007, Carolingian Weber, "Madame Chic," p. 7.
BookPage,http://www.bookpage.com/ (March 3, 2008), Lisa Porter, review get into I Am Madame X.
Daily Home Online,http://www.dailyhome.com/ (March 3, 2008), Marianne Moates, discussion of I Am Madame X.
Gioia Diliberto Home page,http://www.gioiadiliberto.com (March 3, 2008).
Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series