The New York Times - Janet Maslin
This eagerly dishy book's main draw is its march of stars and styles…Think of anyone who had cachet in the worlds of movies, literature or fashion, starting in 1970 or so, and chances are good that they pop up in this book, even if all Buck ever did was consider the person's proposition and turn it down…Buck has been a fabulous Zelig in the world of memoirs. She has witnessed or experienced a book's worth of tellable tales, tall or otherwise. She's certainly entitled to a version of her own.
Publishers Weekly
★ 11/28/2016
From the very beginning of this lapidary memoir, Buck (The Only Place to Be) is immersed in illusion. Her father, Jules Buck, was a cinematographer for John Huston before founding Keep Films with Peter O’Toole. Joan inherited her father’s eye for props, but while he used them to create feeling, she read feeling into them. Her elegant descriptions are glued together with a mortar of famous names (Jeanne Moreau, Lauren Bacall, Anjelica Huston). None of her youthful flirtations (Tom Wolfe) and more-than-flirtations (Donald Sutherland) lasted: “I couldn’t read humans as easily as I could read the meaning of their clothes.” In 1994, she became editor of French Vogue and spiraled into a psychedelic head trip of beautiful objects set against her gathering anxiety and her father’s mental illness. She was let go in 2001 after a stint in rehab, not for chemical dependency but for what she sees as an addiction to the “glossy view of life.” She relapsed with a puff piece for American Vogue on Bashar al-Assad’s wife. For the most part, she shies away from self-analysis: her divorce from John Heilpern, a onetime contributing editor to Vanity Fair, is dismissed with a terse “I’d tried to have a normal life, and failed.” Yet overall, Buck includes a brilliant amount of detail in this memoir. Agent: Andy McNicol, WME. (Mar.)
winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of Doubt John Patrick Shanley
"The Price of Illusion is a spilled treasure of a book. Unexpected sudden diamonds cascade across every page. The language is dazzling, but even more overwhelming is the Proustian level of observation. Fashion is laid bare of its artifice. Celebrated giants like Peter O'Toole and John Huston show up in human form. And Miss Buck's career and family flameouts dovetail into a single, heartbreaking tragedy. If you are drawn to glamour and pain, get ready to be mesmerized."
Elle
"If you loved The Devil Wears Prada, you’ll adore Joan Juliet Buck’s The Price of Illusion, her deliciously written memoir of her golden life in Hollywood and at Paris Vogue, which became more and more about running as fast as she could until, in one of the best blow-by-blows of being fired you’ll ever read, she finally began to figure out what matter.
4 Stars USA Today
Buck offers sharp, candid observations....the author is an appealing protagonist who never takes herself too seriously, nor those around her....By the end of this exquisitely written memoir, Buck emerges triumphant.
Robert Goolrick
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.
Salman Rushdie
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."
Peter Nichols
"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."
VF.com
"A juicy read that leaves no stone unturned in its critical view of the fashion and publishing worlds..."
People
[A] lush, charming memoir.
Liz Smith
Ms. Buck has been everywhere, done everything — the most delicious...pages I’ve read in months....sure to ravish the best-seller lists.
HEADBUTLER.COM
A happy ending? Try this: As she recovers from her addiction to Conde Nast and fashion, Joan Juliet Buck is at last free to be the writer she always wanted to be.
Patricia Bosworth
Brimming over with voluptuous details, this is delicious writing—intelligent, provocative, ironic, and so compulsively readable I simply could not put it down.
New York Times
Praise for Joan Juliet Buck:
"One of the most compelling personalities in the world of style...a shrewd and longtime chronicler of trends."
The New York Times
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.
Michael Cunningham
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.
bestselling author of Far From the Tree Andrew Solomon
In this often hilarious yet ultimately profound memoir, Joan Juliet Buck explores life’s most gorgeous surfaces and agonizing depths. She writes with brio even when she narrates times of difficulty, and achieves a remarkable mixture of modesty, exuberance, and pained confession. Buck’s brilliant wit, her entirely original sense of style, her capacity to negotiate tragedy, and her gift for self-analysis make this book not only riveting, but also unforgettable.
The Oprah Magazine O
"Like a tin of caviar or a strand of heirloom pearls, Joan Juliet Buck's memoir...satisfies the appetite for luxury [and] poignant introspection."
#1 New York Times bestselling author of A Reliable Robert Goolrick
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.
Entertainment Weekly
"A-"
The New York Times
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.
Library Journal
02/01/2017
Writer and cultural critic Buck grew up in Paris in the 1950s as a part of the expatriate film community. Her father, film producer Jules Buck, chose John Huston as her godfather and treated actor Peter O'Toole like a member of the family. This memoir describes living in a family and social world where appearances seemed to be as important as reality. The author's education at Sarah Lawrence was cut short when she started working at Glamour, beginning a career in journalism that included Vogue, Vanity Fair, Women's Wear Daily, and The New Yorker. Buck served as editor in chief of Paris Vogue from 1994 to 2001. Here, she details her work, active social life, and the ongoing drama of her relationship with her parents. Her rich romantic life included a marriage to journalist John Heilpern and a series of affairs with famous, obscure, and "secret" men. This narrative offers a snapshot of a slice of society and an era that includes haute couture, the AIDS epidemic, and the waning of magazines. VERDICT Fans of high fashion and celebrity culture will enjoy this insider account. Buck's straight-forward style reads more like a discrete social history than a deeply personal reflection on her life.—Judy Solberg, Sacramento, CA
Kirkus Reviews
2016-12-19
The essayist, critic, novelist, and former editor-in-chief of Paris Vogue reflects on the triumphs and excesses of her fashionable past.As the only child of celebrated parents, Buck (Daughter of the Swan, 1987, etc.) enjoyed a privileged upbringing among many of the 20th century's more notable celebrities. Her father, Jules Buck, was a Hollywood producer perhaps best known for helping to launch Peter O'Toole's early film career. In sometimes-meandering detail, the author relives her restless years as she established an esteemed reputation as a writer and authority on fashion and culture. There's some excessive name-dropping as Buck references numerous Hollywood and fashion elites in quick succession, yet rarely does she pause for many of these individuals—e.g., Donald Sutherland and Brian De Palma—to spring to life on these pages. Throughout the book, the author explores her complicated and evolving relationship with her parents. Her father, in particular, asserted a domineering influence even as his increasingly erratic behavior in later years weighed on her existence as a burden—but also a reliable touchstone. Buck's narrative gathers focus and momentum when she lands the Vogue position in her late 40s. Within these chapters, she provides acute, illuminating observations on the challenges of running a fashion magazine and of the pretensions of the industry. Her description of Susan Train, Vogue's Paris bureau chief, provides an uncompromising glimpse into this world: "She fielded the daily telexes from New York demanding a dress, a photographer, a model, a star, a location, a car, a different car, a different dress, a chateau instead of a house, not that chateau, the other chateau, visas for Yemen, customs declarations, tissue paper, dangerous wildlife, rare flowers, rarer flowers, bushes, buds, trees, photogenic children of impeccable pedigree. She flawlessly navigated the chasms of rage that roiled in the heart of every fashion player. Even the messengers were touchy." An overlong but relentlessly candid and often absorbing account of a complex life spent in and out of the fashion spotlight.