"Lili Anolik takes us under the hood, not just of literary history but of what makes a woman palatable for public consumption. The greatest female writer to take on the female writer, Lili never falters. Sentence by sentence, page by page, she does Joan and Eve proud and explains the truth about why women who speak their truth will always be societal dynamite. The book is magic. It's all I ever needed." --Lena Dunham
"Anolik unearths a complicated, contentious--and scandalously overlooked--alliance between these two glamorous behemoths of Californian literature. . . . What results is a love letter in the form of this detailed biography that reads like a propulsive novel. You'll be reaching for Didion's and Babitz's books to search for evidence of the messy truths revealed on these pages." --Oprah Daily
"Didion and Babitz looks at the complicated relationship between late literary icons Joan Didion and Eve Babitz. . . . What the book makes clear is that Didion and Babitz were more alike than either would have liked to admit." --TIME
"A revealing investigation of Babitz's complicated relationship with Joan Didion. . . . [Anolik] provides astute character portraits of both writers, suggesting that though Didion was disciplined and spare where Babitz was sensual and lush, the two shared a single-minded commitment to their artistry. It's a crackling dual biography of two of L.A.'s brightest literary lights." --Publishers Weekly
"[Anolik's] double biography is an account of a dispute between highly creative frenemies where the wounds festered for years and no one ever worked it out on the remix." --New York Magazine, Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2024
"As Lili Anolik argues in this joint biography, Didion & Babitz represent more than what it means to be a woman who writes: They're two halves of American womanhood. It's a big swing, but one that Anolik knocks out of the park, showing readers how Didion was the sun to Babitz's moon, the superego to her id." --Bustle
"Lili Anolik established herself as the Eve Babitz whisperer with her unforgettable magazine stories about the then-mostly-forgotten-but-now-celebrated L.A. author and her book Hollywood's Eve. Her new release further explores Babitz's friendship and rivalry with that other California girl, Joan Didion--and while Anolik's own allegiance is clear, her book is a captivating look into the way two very brilliant, very different writers maneuvered around one another, and the starry, messy world they inhabited. Someone get Ryan Murphy a copy, we smell a new season of Feud." --Town & Country, Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2024