Anna Fields, you had me at You can take the girl out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the girl! I love nothing more than reading a story set in the south, or devouring a good memoir. When I heard that a book was coming out that had the best of both worlds, I knew I had to read this book.
Photo courtesy of G.P. Putnam’s Sons
I was literally jumping with joy when I got my advanced reader copy of Confessions of a Rebel Debutante in the mail last month. I knew I was going to love it, and love it I did. Anne Fields not only has written a charming, funny and fabulous memoir, but she tells a great story about what happens when a North Carolina society girl gets kicked out of cotillion classes and doesn’t make it as a deb. You can not believe where this Rebel Deb’s life leads her.
Photo courtesy of Anna Fields
Anna Fields deliciously describes her childhood and what life was like going through (and eventually getting kicked out of) cotillion was like, beginning at age eleven, all the while making fun of everything about debbing including herself down to her big butt. After seeing her photo on the back of my book, I had a hard time believing she was ever fat, because she reminds me a little bit of Reese Witherspoon. But she forces me to believe it with tales of being a tall girl who wore glasses and had bad skin and a white girl ‘fro after reading her hilarious cheerleading tryout story to the tune of Too Legit to Quit.
As much as I enjoyed hearing what life was like behind the scenes of debbing, I found the heart of Anna’s story in her own personal story, and not the story of the other rich and often drunk debutantes. Things really get rolling in the book when she began writing about her life at boarding school, the prestigious Wellington Academy run by a woman named Miss Freeze. Anna never fit in to begin with, but once she became best friends with her wild roommate Alma who was a fan of public ladyscaping, known as the campus queer for her unladylike and non-deb ways, and who told outrageous tall tales that even involved the Playboy Mansion, well, fun and adventures began that were even better than attending cotillion-related events. Alma, needless to say, was a bad influence on a Anna to begin with, but the two of them together had them both on some crazy adventures. They got caught drinking at a college fraternity party, and once stumbled across a girl from school who had just been raped, but they still were the ones who got in trouble because they were caught vacationing on the wrong side of town in Myrtle Beach, let alone their biggest adventure that included a tragedy I’ll let you discover on your own.
Who would have thought a Winston-Salem girl could escape society by getting an Ivy League education, move to New York and LA and work for major celebrities such as Diana Ross and Jill Zarin, let alone act alongside the best of young hollywood in a major motion picture called Mona Lisa Smile, and eventually become a successful playwright, standup comedian and writer for As the World Turns? I can, after reading this book. I cracked up when Ms. Fields starts her memoir off with this line – I’ve only got one good story: How I became a Rebel Debutante. She’s got more than a hundred good stories in this book alone and I can not begin to cover most of them.
You would be absolutely bonkers not to read this book, because not only would you not get to learn all about her very interesting and entertaining life, but you would miss out reading all of the celebrity dirt she has collected through the years. My god, the things she has written in this book and didn’t even hint at on the cover or in the press! An unnamed female Grey’s Anatomy star telling her they loved anal and want to make out with her, her interview with Dr. Ruth that had the famous sex counselor personally offended, and her time spent working a private waiting gig at Calabasas home for three sisters (who, to me, had to have been Kim, Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian) which ended in a FBI drug bust.
To buy a copy of the fabulous Confessions of a Rebel Debutante by Anna Fields, click here.
To visit Anna Fields website, go here.
To visit the Rebel Debutante blog, go here.
To become a Facebook friend to the Rebel Debutante, go here.
Share this post:
.gif)
