Overview

"""I didn't want to be subject to anyone's idea of who I was or who I was to become, and what I could or should be doing to enhance anyone else's life!"" So much is surprising and captivating about this coming-of-age story of a culture-rich, pre-and-proto-'60s upper class girl with rebellion and independence wired in. Lale's early decades were a complex mixture of innocence, sophistication, doubt, passion, adventure, and brutal self-criticism. She grows up mainly with her mother, who had to fight for her career in law because she was a woman. They live in a small East Side walk up, but her mother orders custom-made clothes from Christian Dior in Paris. On one of the early transatlantic voyages of the Andrea Doria, Lale's passion for Italy and modern design are firmly locked in place. Teen years: boys, classical music, and long summer voyages with her crazy-genius-doctor father. On one she almost sails his beloved yawl, Stone Horse Light, over Niagara Falls. There's pre-sex and romance and folk singing in Washington Square. An artistic calling begins to beckon, though academics are a struggle. Summers bring job adventures: fashion in NYC; Harrods in London; the Spoleto Festival in Italy. Finally finding focus for her passion, she powers her way into her chosen profession: architecture. Flash forward to an early career moment: ""We don't hire women here. We think the presence of women is distracting and diffuses the focus on work. We cannot make an exception for you."" So much changed during the decades of Lale's growing up, as young women like her-capable, frustrated, and determined-persevered."

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9781951937232

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Reviews

"""It will be shelved under 'Autobiography' or 'Memoirs, ' but it is also a masterful work of anthropology, a compelling tale of a stubborn female individual coming of age not in Samoa but in upper-class America just before women's rights kicked in. Laced with a subtle under-wit and sometimes alarming candor, Girl Intrepid will captivate you."" - Gail Godwin, Flora and Grief Cottage ""Reads almost like an update of Edith Wharton's novel House of Mirth about the shadow side of New York high society during the Edwardian era. Armstrong's vivid account of growing up in that world-and then growing away from it as an adult-serves as a sobering reminder that wealth doesn't solve (and perhaps complicates) the nagging human need to forge one's own identity. Armstrong's torturous journey toward this goal makes for fascinating reading."" - Lisa Alther, Kinflicks and Blood Feud: The Hatfields and the McCoys ""What an adventure! Architect Lale Armstrong takes us on an incredible ride-in turns joyful, poignant and tragic-through a life that gets to the heart of the generation that came of age just after World War Two."" - Chris Klavan, Thump Gun Hitched and Schmuck ""Lale Armstrong tells a juicy pre-feminist rite-of-passage tale, but this book is also a sharp-tongued pathology of privilege, its cluelessness and its cruelty, and she writes about all of it with wit-breezy, ironic, defiant."" - Stephen Wadsworth, Marivaux: Three Plays; Moliére: Don Juan; co-author with Leonard Bernstein of A Quiet Place ""It's not easy to be stylish and moving and sad and funny all at once, but Lale Armstrong does it all in Girl Intrepid."" - Betty Rollin, former NBC News correspondent, author of First, You Cry and Last Wish ""Lale Armstrong has a powerful gift for narrative, and true to her calling as a designer, every detail is perfect. She sees the New York social whirl with the perceptiveness of Edith Wharton; but she brings a very modern exuberance as she tells the story of a busy coming-of-age, with sidelong glances at the CIA, NASA, the civil rights movement and some of the world's most exotic locales. This is a wonderful joy ride of a book."" - Ted Widmer, Young America: The Flowering Democracy in New York City and Disunion: A History of the Civil War"

It will be shelved under 'Autobiography' or 'Memoirs, ' but it is also a masterful work of anthropology, a compelling tale of a stubborn female individual coming of age not in Samoa but in upper-class America just before women's rights kicked in. Laced with a subtle under-wit and sometimes alarming candor, Girl Intrepid will captivate you. - Gail Godwin, Flora and Grief Cottage Reads almost like an update of Edith Wharton's novel House of Mirth about the shadow side of New York high society during the Edwardian era. Armstrong's vivid account of growing up in that world-and then growing away from it as an adult-serves as a sobering reminder that wealth doesn't solve (and perhaps complicates) the nagging human need to forge one's own identity. Armstrong's torturous journey toward this goal makes for fascinating reading. - Lisa Alther, Kinflicks and Blood Feud: The Hatfields and the McCoys What an adventure! Architect Lale Armstrong takes us on an incredible ride-in turns joyful, poignant and tragic-through a life that gets to the heart of the generation that came of age just after World War Two. - Chris Klavan, Thump Gun Hitched and Schmuck Lale Armstrong tells a juicy pre-feminist rite-of-passage tale, but this book is also a sharp-tongued pathology of privilege, its cluelessness and its cruelty, and she writes about all of it with wit-breezy, ironic, defiant. - Stephen Wadsworth, Marivaux: Three Plays; Moliere: Don Juan; co-author with Leonard Bernstein of A Quiet Place It's not easy to be stylish and moving and sad and funny all at once, but Lale Armstrong does it all in Girl Intrepid. - Betty Rollin, former NBC News correspondent, author of First, You Cry and Last Wish Lale Armstrong has a powerful gift for narrative, and true to her calling as a designer, every detail is perfect. She sees the New York social whirl with the perceptiveness of Edith Wharton; but she brings a very modern exuberance as she tells the story of a busy coming-of-age, with sidelong glances at the CIA, NASA, the civil rights movement and some of the world's most exotic locales. This is a wonderful joy ride of a book. - Ted Widmer, Young America: The Flowering Democracy in New York City and Disunion: A History of the Civil War

Author Information

"Leslie Armstrong, known as ""Lale,"" is an architect and writer who was born in Boston and lives in New York City. The author of The Little House, and Space for Dance: An Architectural Design Guide, she began her architecture practice in the mid-'70s, renovating and repurposing buildings for the performing arts, and residential and commercial architecture and interiors. In 1994, she joined a large firm as a senior designer and project manager (and senior skirt) for their high-profile interiors projects, and began to think about writing a memoir. In the early aughts, she met and married John Bowers, a distinguished writer and teacher of fiction and nonfiction who encouraged her to tell her story. In 2008 while continuing to practice on her own, she began Girl Intrepid. Lale and John live in New York City, and between them have five children and five grandchildren. Lale continues to work as both an architect and interior designer, and is planning a second memoir, on the later decades of her long and rich life."

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