When She Is Old and I Am Famous

Julie Orringer

Original publication

1998

Average rating

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Total reads logged

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Opening Excerpt

From the story

There are grape leaves, like a crown, on her head. Grapes hang in her hair, and in her hands she holds the green vines. She dances with both arms in the air. On her smallest toe she wears a ring of pink shell.

Can someone tell her, please, to go home? This is my Italy and my story. We are in a vineyard near Florence. I have just turned twenty. She is a girl, a gangly teen, and she is a model.

Story Vibe & Style Profile

Literary Dimensions
Emotional Weight 2.9 / 5

Reflective

Narrative Pacing 1.2 / 5

Contemplative

Literary Style 3.7 / 5

Contemporary Literary

Speculative / Reality 1.8 / 5

Realistic / Mimetic

Appearances

About the Author

Julie Orringer is an American novelist, short story writer, and professor. She attended Cornell University and the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. She was born in Miami, Florida and now lives in Brooklyn with her husband, fellow writer Ryan Harty. She is the author of The Invisible Bridge, a New York Times bestseller, and How to Breathe Underwater, a collection of stories; her novel, The Flight Portfolio, tells the story of Varian Fry, the New York journalist who went to Marseille in 1940 to save writers and artists blacklisted by the Gestapo. The novel inspired the Netflix series Transatlantic.

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