Archive for November 25th, 2009:
When Fiction Is Nonfiction But Meant to be Fiction
posted November 25, 2009
Posted by Mariko Fujinaka in books
Cover of The Red Hat Club
Say your best buddy from childhood writes a novel. Let’s say you pick up a copy at your local independent bookseller (of course!). You’re reading it, and you’re thinking, gee, some of these characters and circumstances seem awfully familiar. Then you realize, hey, some of this stuff happened to me!
Well, something similar happened to Vicki Stewart. Stewart felt that a character in the novel The Red Hat Club by childhood friend Haywood Smith tread a little too closely to home, so she sued Smith for libel and invasion of privacy. The jury gave Stewart $100,000 for the libel suit but nothing for invasion of privacy. The jury also declined to cover Stewart’s attorney fees.
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