Sometimes You Have to Lie: The Life and Times of Louise Fitzhugh

(Seal, $30)

Though the 11-yearold title character of Harriet the Spy “lives in the pantheon of beloved literary role models,” said Betsy Groban in The Boston Globe, little has previously been known about the woman who created the authority-defying middle schooler with the notebook full of cruel observations. Louise Fitzhugh, who died at 46, was never comfortable with the attention that arrived after the 1964 publication and instant success of her first novel. But biographer Leslie Brody “turned into a bit of a spy herself to write this book,” and the Fitzhugh we meet here—a spirited, gay nonconformist—now assumes her rightful place as one of the seminal figures of children’s literature.

What we learn here about Fitzhugh reveals Harriet the Spy’s “quiet subversiveness,” said Jennifer Wilson in The New Republic.

Born in 1928 into a wealthy Memphis family, young Louise began mistrusting adults after discovering that her mother hadn’t died, as her father claimed, but had lost custody after a bitter public divorce. By 21, Fitzhugh had dropped out of Bard College and used an inheritance to tour Europe and then settle in New York City’s Greenwich Village, where she joined a circle of party-minded lesbian artists, actors, and writers. She also became the long-term partner of a casting agent who worked with blacklisted clients, and though Fitzhugh’s first love was painting, she transitioned easily from illustrating a children’s book to writing her own. Young readers loved Harriet Welsch, while some adults protested the lesson Harriet ultimately learns: that sometimes white lies are necessary.

After 1964, “Fitzhugh’s story grows somewhat sadder,” said Gwen Ihnat in AVClub .com. She struggled to top her triumph, and when she died of an aneurysm in 1976, the woman she had lived with hid Fitzhugh’s sexuality in a way Fitzhugh didn’t. Fitzhugh chose to avoid the spotlight rather than return to the closet. As Harriet’s nanny counseled, “To yourself you must always tell the truth.” In this book, “Brody shows that Fitzhugh did so, offering Harriet the Spy fans even more to admire.”