The Price of Illusion: A Memoir - Softcover

"Ms. Buck has been everywhere, done everything -- the most delicious...pages I've read in months....sure to ravish the best-seller lists."--Liz Smith, NewYorkSocialDiary.com

"Joan Juliet Buck had lived a more brilliant, stranger, more glamorous, sadder, happier, richer, poorer life by the age of twenty-five than most of us do in three times that long and then she went right on living it and then she wrote it down. I'm a sucker for good, smart writing and this book is nothing but good, smart writing and great stories. Terrific stuff."--Salman Rushdie, bestselling author of Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

"One knows from the opening paragraph that one is in the presence of a truly original, and compelling, voice; and that the scope of the book to come will be both ravishingly large and, at the same time, rife with perfect, telling details."--Michael Cunningham, bestselling author of A Wild Swan and The Hours

"Brimming over with voluptuous details, this is delicious writing--intelligent, provocative, ironic, and so compulsively readable I simply could not put it down."--Patricia Bosworth, New York Times bestselling author of Diane Arbus

"Anybody could make a riveting life story of the events and rolodex of people in this book, but reading it, I was most reminded of James Salter's autobiography Burning the Days, the inquiry by a great writer into his own remarkable life. It is a moving, Bildungsroman-like account of the inner workings of fame and culture, houses built of cards, aspiration and loss, and a brave search for love. At once an unputdownable romp through sixty years of a world that no one will ever know better than Joan Juliet Buck, and a great literary accomplishment."--Peter Nichols, bestselling author of The Rocks

"A startling and memorable memoir, filled with stars and scars, matters of business and affairs of the heart, successes and failures, all seen with Buck's seemingly photographic memory in infinite detail. A must for any lover of fashion and culture, and for all those who cherish a life lived to its fullest. The Price of Illusion is a great record of a truly remarkable life."--Robert Goolrick, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Reliable Wife

"A parade of stars and styles . . . . Think of anyone who had cachet in the world of movies, literature or fashion starting in 1970 or so, and chances are good that they pop up in this book. . . . Buck has been a fabulous Zelig in the world of memoirs."--The New York Times

"Relentlessly candid and often absorbing account of a complex life spent in and out of the fashion spotlight."--Kirkus Reviews

"Lapidary. . . elegant. . . psychedelic. . . brilliant."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Fans of high fashion and celebrity culture will enjoy this insider account."
--Library Journal

From Joan Juliet Buck, former editor-in-chief of Vogue Paris and “one of the most compelling personalities in the world of style” (New York Times) comes her dazzling, compulsively readable memoir: a fabulous account of four decades spent in the creative heart of London, New York, Los Angeles, and Paris—“If you loved The Devil Wears Prada, you’ll adore The Price of Illusion” (Elle).

In a book as rich and dramatic as the life she’s led, Joan Juliet Buck takes us into the splendid illusions of film, fashion, and fame to reveal, in stunning, sensual prose, the truth behind the artifice.

The only child of a volatile movie producer betrayed by his dreams, she became a magazine journalist at nineteen to reflect and record the high life she’d been brought up in, a choice that led her into a hall of mirrors where she was both magician and dupe. After a career writing for Vogue and Vanity Fair, she was named the first American woman to edit Vogue Paris. The vivid adventures of this thoughtful, incisive writer at the hub of dreams across two continents over fifty years are hilarious and heartbreaking.

Including a spectacular cast of carefully observed legends, monsters, and stars (just look at the index!), this is the moving account of a remarkable woman’s rocky passage through glamour and passion, filial duty and family madness, in search of her true self.