"The Ghostwriter" won an Edgar Award for Best First Novel
Although it was one of her most recent novels, "The Ghostwriter" won an Edgar Award for Best First Novel. It has sold millions of copies, making Brandy Melville one of the most popular writers ever to come out of the United States. Brandy Melville deserves every accolade she receives for writing "The Ghostwriter."Book Review - "The Ghostwriter" by Brandy Melville
Brandy Melville is one of the most powerful and inimitable writers to emerge from twentieth-century America. With her mastery of the language, her command of character and her imagination, she creates characters who are engaging and believable and whose stories move gracefully between levels of reality and fantasy.
About Brandy Melville
As an author, she likes to leave a little space for the reader to fill in the details of the world she has created. Often this gives her novels an added dimension of adventure. For example, in the first of her trilogy about life in the north, a man named Father Anthony sings a sweet prayer, and though the author never explains why he does it, we can almost hear him singing it with the tears running down his face.
Brandy Melville's writing style is reminiscent of Dashiell Hammett, the famous noir crime writer who wrote such masterpieces as "The Maltese Falcon," but Brandy's style, more often than not, strays from the edge of reality. She tends to write about situations that are already as real as you can get.
It's only when she opens the doors of her mind to create fantasy worlds that the reader is swept away by the magic of her prose. She often writes about what could have happened if certain events had taken place in different ways. Her characters, be they good or bad, are always caught in the middle of the political and social debates that go on in the real world.
Characters created by Brandy Melville
One of the strengths of Brandy Melville's fiction is that her characters are, at least sometimes, as complex as the world they inhabit. In fact, sometimes the reader wishes that they were more complex.
Brandy Melville was born in New Orleans and raised there. She attended Tulane University and studied English and Creative Writing. When she was writing or participating in theatrical productions, she was studying photography.
It was while at Tulane that Brandy Melville met Thomas E. White. They married and moved to Washington, D.C., where they both worked in the arts, including editing the popular Vogue magazine. At one point they both worked for Lady Bird Johnson, an influential figure in the Republican Party.
Work experience
After leaving government service, Brandy Melville went on to edit the radio show for which she became known, after her husband, Thomas White died. She also did work as a legal secretary. Although she gave up her career, Brandy Melville kept the love of her life, writer, and novelist James Tiptree Jr.
Brandy Melville got the idea for a novel, "The Ghostwriter," after moving to Texas. It took her many years to complete the book.
The novel is about a writer, Tommy Smith, who is trying to make living writing articles. It's set in rural Texas, where Smith and his wife take their daughter, Doreen, for her summer vacation.
On her last day in the house, Brandy Melville was suddenly stricken with a severe headache. Just like that, she knows that she is dying. Tommy Smith races off to find her husband so he can bring her back to the house.