BECOMING DUCHESS GOLDBLATT

How does a fictional character write a real memoir? Very, very well.

Most readers who are active on social media are aware of Duchess Goldblatt, the acerbic yet warmhearted doyenne of Twitter, represented by a Frans Hals portrait of an elderly woman with a stiff muff around her neck. Over the years, she’s dispensed witticisms and advice to her 24,000-plus followers, many of them writers, without giving away any clues about the person behind the persona. When she finally met her No. 1 fan, Lyle Lovett (it’s a long story), he was shocked that she wasn’t "a little old lady or a gay man!” Now, Duchess Goldblatt’s admirers can get to know her still-anonymous creator, and perhaps the biggest surprise in this striking memoir is the fact that Duchess is a name (taken from a friend’s dog), not a title, though no doubt everyone will keep calling her “Your Grace.” The author created Duchess during a terrible time: She'd lost her job, her husband had left her, and she was tormented by the part-time separation from her young son. Duchess was a way for her to lurk online, but she soon found herself carefully crafting posts, responding to everyone who wrote to her, and finding solace in the community she’d created. The book is prismatic, moving among the author’s difficult childhood, the years after her divorce, and her growing relationships with people Duchess had befriended—only a few of whom, including Lovett, have ever met her. She wrestles with the questions of whether she and Duchess are two separate people and how Duchess makes friends so easily when she herself feels almost friendless. Lovett’s manager called what she’s doing “collaborative performance art,” and that’s an apt term for it; together with Duchess’ followers, she’s created a long-term fever dream of humor, compassion, wordplay, and dog photos.

A fascinating memoir by a 21st-century original.