With her matter-of-fact tone and acerbic humor, Harriet the Spy is the quintessential story of a tomboy-a queer heroine in childhood. Now Harriet’s author, Louise Fitzhugh, is the subject of a biography-Leslie Brody’s Sometimes You Have t o Lie: The Life and Times of Louise Fitzhugh, Renegade Author of Harriet the Spy, a succinct and readable portrait of the short-lived and charismatic lesbian writer and illustrator. Readers young and old, however, sixty years ago as much as today, find in Harriet a cathartic release and creative permission.
As training for one day becoming a famous novelist, she ventures on a daily “spy route,” stalking a handful of brownstones on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, secretly watching her friends and neighbors, chronicling their business in a private notebook using a tone so deadpan and factual it borders on cruel. Welch, the titular character of Louise Fitzhugh’s iconic children’s book Harriet the Spy is eleven years old and determined to write everything down. The Creative Brilliance of Louise Fitzhugh: On Sometimes You Have to Lie by Leslie Brody
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