Dear Mr. You - Couverture souple

“Mary-Louise Parker’s Dear Mr. You is straight-up fantastic; a gripping and deeply humane and often hilarious book. It catches glimpses of life at all sorts of unexpected moments, electrifying them with its sharp-eyed astonishment at how absurd and joyous things can get. There’s nothing cheaply-earned about its wonder; nothing sugarcoated in its gratitude.It’s all grit, all messy particulars—full of surprise and full-throated in its song.” (Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams)

“To have an artist accomplished in one genre triumph in another—seemingly out of the blue—is an extraordinary event. Mary-Louise Parker’s Dear Mr. You is a pants-pissingly funny, gut-wrenching meditation on her loving and tormented encounters with the masculine. From grandfather to father to son to the wacky, pre-Burning Man hippie with a loincloth who haunts her at a co-op job to the lover who deserves the coda ‘Sleep tight, little monster.’ Whether honoring the ash-covered firefighter she sees on 9/11 or shouting as a crazy person at her malignantly lost cabdriver, Parker merges memoir with poetry in this haunting, sui generis work. I drank it down in one gulp, then started back at page one again. A magnificent, necessary surprise.” (Mary Karr, author of The Liars' Club and Lit)

"This book will shake your soul out. Funny, surprising, angry, intimate, political, saucy, profound, and very very tender indeed, this is a book that will pass from mother to daughter to father to son and back to mother again. A wonderful literary achievement." (Colum McCann, New York Times bestselling author of Let the Great World Spin)

"In an industry that produces replicas, there is no one else quite like Mary-Louise Parker...Funny, heartbreaking, and profound." (Elle)

"Bruisingly honest." (Vogue)

"The book is written in a smart, beguiling voice that is inextricably entwined with qualities that Ms. Parker radiates as an actress. There’s as much flintiness as reckless charm. Flirtation and mischief are big parts of her arsenal. So is the honest soul-searching that gives this slight-looking book much more heft than might be expected....Its tone is brave and warmly conspiratorial, neither of which has ever hurt an already well-known, professionally adorable person when it comes to attracting readers. That Ms. Parker’s book is so seriously good seems like overkill." (Janet Maslin, The New York Times)

"Poetic and often hilarious." (Cosmopolitan)

"The most provocative memoir hitting shelves in the coming months." (Hollywood Reporter)

"Intimate and polished." (Associated Press)

"Memoir readers, storytellers and lovers, starving artists, letter writers, and dreamers will enjoy." (Library Journal)

The bestselling, wonderfully unconventional, “warmly conspiratorial…seriously good” ( The New York Times) literary memoir from the award-winning actress that has received fabulous and wide praise. “There is no one else quite like Mary-Louise Parker…Funny, heartbreaking and profound” ( Elle).

An extraordinary literary work, Dear Mr. You renders the singular arc of a woman’s life through letters Mary-Louise Parker composes to the men, real and hypothetical, who have informed the person she is today. Beginning with the grandfather she never knew, the letters range from a missive to the beloved priest from her childhood to remembrances of former lovers to an homage to a firefighter she encountered to a heartfelt communication with the uncle of the infant daughter she adopted. Readers will be amazed by the depth and style of these letters, which reveal the complexity and power to be found in relationships both loving and fraught.