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WORK TITLE: I’ll Eat When I’m Dead
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.barbarabourland.com/
CITY: Baltimore
STATE: MD
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.barbarabourland.com/about * http://www.booklistreader.com/2017/05/02/books-and-authors/talking-with-barbara-bourland-about-her-debut-mystery-ill-eat-when-im-dead/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and novelist. Worked as a freelance writer; formerly a web producer for O, The Oprah Magazine, Oprah.com, and OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network.
MEMBER:International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Grazia and Forbes Traveler, and to websites, including Concierge.com.
SIDELIGHTS
Barbara Bourland is a freelance writer turned novelist. Her debut mystery novel, I’ll Eat When I’m Dead, revolves around the death of a woman who police think suffered a heart attack from dieting too much. However, the woman’s friend, a fashion editor at the prestigious RAGE magazine, has a hard time accepting the verdict. “I was a web producer, and I did travel writing, and I was sort of a not-terribly-important employee at a variety of media companies,” Bourland noted in an interview with the Booklist Reader website contributor Annie Bostrom, adding: “This book really comes out of my personal love for women’s magazines and how I have longed for them to be.”
Bourland went on to note in the interview for the Booklist Reader that women’s magazines present various fantasies for readers and remarked: “Most women I know tend to investigate the construction of their identity. We’re always, on the one hand, getting dressed and shopping, picking outfits, changing up our makeup; it really does feel like self-expression. But then on the other hand, fashion and beauty are these massive economies that have global ramifications.” Bourland told Bostrom about her interest in “commercial feminism” as an inspiration for the novel, saying: “I don’t know if we can buy our way into better politics or not, but I had the idea that, what if there was a magazine that could do that?”
Cat Ono, the editor of RAGE magazine is a powerful feminist who thinks that her friend Hillary West, who died in her own office at RAGE, did not die because of her longing to be thin. She thinks there must be another reason than just poor eating habits that police think led to Hillary’s having cardiac arrest. Cat’s suspicions are confirmed after the New York Police Department reopens the case, with the investigation being led by handsome detective Mark Hutton. When he conducts an initial interview with Cat, she is impressed not only by his good locks but also by his charm and the fact that he dresses well.
The case, it turns out, was reopened after the police found a cryptic message that Hillary had sent to her brother. Cat decides that she is going to do some investigating on her own, all the while trying to meet a deadline for the magazine and training Hillary’s replacement, a socialite who goes by the name Lou. Cat soon becomes suspicious about some designer eye drops that Hillary was using. She traces their origin to an upscale cosmetics shop and soon finds herself going undercover as she joins forces with the police to discover what is going on at the shop.
Initially, it seems as though Hillary and Mark are going to be involved in a romantic relationship. However, after an undercover sting operation goes wrong, the relationship cools. Meanwhile, Cat and Bess Bonner, associate editor at the magazine, are busy trying to save the magazine’s reputation after the fallout from the attempted sting operation. The two are soon designated as the glamorous representatives of RAGE and find themselves doing countless photo shoots and appearances. Meanwhile, they must wear skin-tight dresses that only the use of drugs and alcohol seem to make bearable. As time passes, Mark becomes increasingly concerned with their wild behavior. His concerns grow even more when it is suspected that an employee at RAGE is willing to kill to achieve her goals.
The author “narrates at a quick New York City tempo, detailing perks, personal connections, and property values, both satirizing and celebrating fashion and feminism,” wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor. Annie Bostrom, writing in Booklist, noted the novel’s “terrific characters … and a heaping helping of froth and gloss that will turn readers into industry insiders.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor commented that, despite the focus on beauty and the seemingly overwhelming desire to be thin, Borland provides “tantalizing glimpses of the vulnerability and insecurities beneath the surface.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 1, 2017, Annie Bostrom, review of I’ll Eat When I’m Dead, p. 24.
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2017, review of I’ll Eat When I’m Dead.
Publishers Weekly, March 20, 2017, review of I’ll Eat When I’m Dead, p. 52.
ONLINE
Barbara Bourland Website, http://www.barbarabourland.com (January 9, 2018).
Booklist Reader, http://www.booklistreader.com/ (May 2, 2017), Annie Bostrom, “Talking with Barbara Bourland about Her Debut Mystery, I’ll Eat When I’m Dead.“
Barbara Bourland
Barbara Bourland lives in Baltimore, MD. Formerly, she was a freelance writer for Forbes Traveler, Conde Nast Digital's Concierge.com, and a web producer for O, The Oprah Magazine, Oprah.com, and OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network. She is a member of the ITW, MWA, and Sisters in Crime.
I'll Eat When I'm Dead is her first novel. She is at work on a sequel, entitled Maniacs. Her third novel, Pine City, is also forthcoming from Grand Central Publishing in North America and riverrun abroad.
Follow her @babsbourland on instagram (for pictures of her mastiff) and twitter (for updates).
By Annie Bostrom May 2, 2017 0 Comments
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Talking with Barbara Bourland about her Debut Mystery, I’LL EAT WHEN I’M DEAD
Photo of Barbara Bourland (c) Dennis Drenner
Photo of Barbara Bourland (c) Dennis Drenner
Mystery Month 2017Barbara Bourland’s debut mystery, I’ll Eat When I’m Dead (Grand Central), unfolds from the offices of the fictional RAGE Fashion Book, a groundbreakingly ethical magazine. I loved the book’s characters, especially tough, smart fashion editor Cat Ono, its industry-insider mood with just the right amount of froth and gloss (in other words, a lot), and the way it delightfully skewered the behemoth fashion and beauty industries.
Bourland and I recently talked on the phone about her book, out today, which she calls “a satire that comes from love.” I was surprised by the origins of my favorite character, Cat, and delighted to hear about Bourland’s future projects—including a sequel to IEWID, already in the works.
There’s a line at the beginning of your book that made me drop everything and find a pencil: “Magazines were where women watched themselves being watched; where they learned how to be.” Can you talk a little bit about your work in, and your relationship to, magazines?
I was a web producer, and I did travel writing, and I was sort of a not-terribly-important employee at a variety of media companies. This book really comes out of my personal love for women’s magazines and how I have longed for them to be. We learn about ourselves when we look in the pages of a magazine; we see a fantasy. And that can be the [Vogue creative director] Grace Coddington dragons-and-forest fantasy, or it can be when we see real women looking really powerful.
Grace Coddington
Grace Coddington
Most women I know tend to investigate the construction of their identity. We’re always, on the one hand, getting dressed and shopping, picking outfits, changing up our makeup; it really does feel like self-expression. But then on the other hand, fashion and beauty are these massive economies that have global ramifications.
Often when I pick up a fashion magazine, I’ll see a spread that has some variation on “budget looks for work,” and the idea is that by tending to our own economic needs, we are engaging in feminist behavior that raises all ships. But when the clothing on the page is made by another woman who’s incredibly economically disadvantaged by your passion as a consumer, then it doesn’t really function as feminism. Commercial feminism is a really interesting idea to me. I don’t know if it’s bad or good; I don’t know if we can buy our way into better politics or not, but I had the idea that, what if there was a magazine that could do that? And it really stuck with me. . . [Margo, the editor-in-chief at RAGE, is] very, very loosely based on Helen Gurley Brown, who took over Cosmopolitan.
Can you tell us a little bit about the research that went into writing I’ll Eat When I’m Dead?
There are three books on the garment industry that I read. One of them is Deluxe by Dana Thomas, who lives in Paris and is a foreign correspondent for fashion for T: The New York Times Style Magazine. She wrote this book trying to unpack a high-end handbag. A handbag is $7,000: Where does everything in it come from, and is it really luxurious? There’s a brand understanding that luxury goods are made by groups of women in France whose families have been doing this for a thousand years in a cottage industry in a small town, and it’s worth every penny. But that’s less and less true with each passing year.
deluxe dana thomasI also read Overdressed by Elizabeth Cline. Cline looked in her closet and realized how much fast fashion was in it, and wanted to know how all of it was made and if it was possible to track a supply chain. . . She created a fake company, went to China, handed out business cards, and tried to see as many factories as she could.
There’s another book called Wear No Evil by Greta Eagan, a how-to guide about wearing clothes that aren’t made by someone who’s disadvantaged. But the problem with most clothing really isn’t even necessarily with the manufacturing; all of the statistics about the garment industry in IEWID are true or have been reported in some way. The World Bank put out a report several years ago noting that the garment industry is actually the number two polluter of the worlds potable waterways, after agriculture. Because to make a really inexpensive jersey in a super-bright red with a color-fast dye is pretty chemically complex, and if a manufacturing corridor doesn’t have any incentive to regulate that, they’re not going to. When you start thinking about wanting to buy things that are only made in a way you would feel good about, it does actually become really hard to shop. In IEWID, that universe is different. RAGE has changed that, they have made a difference. That’s the fantasy, that that is even possible. Which it may not be. [For more fashion titles, check out the reading list Bourland shared on Read it Forward. –Ed.]
At one point, readers are suddenly dropped into Cat’s past, which is this unexpected and beautiful departure from the book’s action. How did Cat’s backstory emerge for you?
[When] I wrote the very first draft of the book, I was living in Chicago. My husband was finishing his PhD in Art History at the University of Chicago, and I was doing a year at Harpo Studios. About a week before we got married, which is roughly this time five years ago, he was on the academic job market, and it’s incredibly nerve-racking. He looked at me and said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen. What do you think I could do?”
He’d essentially spent eight years thinking about the semiotic structures of visual culture. . . and I had no idea how that was applicable. I went to work the next day, and I was still thinking about it. I went on my lunch break and I was walking around the block smoking a cigarette and I thought, “Oh my god, you could use all these things at a fashion magazine! But it would have to be really progressive: as glamorous as Vogue and as principled as Ms.” And so I sat there and I wrote this weird little sketch on my phone, with a dead woman at the center of the plot, and the protagonist is this weird alternate-universe version of my husband. But of course Cat went ABD—[and] Ian did finish, and got a job.
Ferdinand de Saussure, foundational semiotician
Ferdinand de Saussure, foundational semiotician
I had forgotten about it until we moved to Baltimore three years ago, and then I was able to sit down and write it. In the moment, I think I was trying to emotionally process a fantasy to deal with the stress of what was actually happening. But it stayed with me, and I’m so glad that it did.
Have you ever been sewn into a dress? Because this happens to your characters a lot and I was so curious if. . .
No! No no no no no. I know some seamstresses, though.
There’s a sequel to I’ll Eat When I’m Dead in the works—any teasers you can throw our way?
While IEWID focused on the impact that print media has on the politics of women’s bodies and women’s work, Maniacs will explore how technology could change a billion women’s lives—including Cat’s—for better, and for worse.
My third novel is also forthcoming from Grand Central. It’s called Pine City, a murder mystery set at an abandoned hotel that’s been turned into an artists’ colony in upstate New York. It’s written in the first person, so it’s different from the constant jumping POVs of IEWID. It’s about a young abstract painter who goes to the colony for the summer, as a guest, and falls into their circle and starts digging around with the people who run the place. It’s sort of sexy, scary, Twin Peaks-y. Right now we’re saying 2019, so I’m working as I go. I started it when I needed a break from Cat’s technologically heavy world. So there’s no phones in Pine City. Phones don’t work there.
Bourland, Barbara: I'LL EAT WHEN I'M
DEAD
Kirkus Reviews.
(Mar. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Bourland, Barbara I'LL EAT WHEN I'M DEAD Grand Central Publishing (Adult Fiction) $27.00 5, 2
ISBN: 978-1-4555-9521-1
When the beautiful Hillary Whitney is found dead, her co-workers smell a rat, but hunting for clues in
stilettos isn't all it's cracked up to be.Hillary is found dead--of starvation, no less--in a locked workroom of
the New York City fashion mag RAGE Fashion Book, and her co-workers are shocked, especially her close
friend and RAGE's senior editor, Catherine "Cat" Ono. While her death isn't officially labeled murder,
Detective Mark Hutton wants to dig deeper, smelling a career maker, and enlists Cat's help. Sparks fly
between the two but quickly cool after a sting goes south, with Cat as bait. If Cat and her friend Bess
Bonner, the magazine's associate editor, thought they'd seen enough death, they'd be wrong. After the fallout
from the sting, Cat and Bess, in an attempt at damage control, are remade as the glam faces of RAGE, and
the endless photo shoots, appearances, and dresses so tight they have to be sewn on are only relieved by
alcohol and drugs, of which there are plenty. Hutton becomes increasingly alarmed by their behavior, and it
looks like a RAGE employee has her own agenda and will kill to achieve it. Bourland's delightfully snarky
(with names such as Whig Beaton Molton-Mauve Lucas) debut leans heavily on satire, poking razor-sharp
fun at the beauty industry and the cutthroat world that Bess and Cat inhabit, and some scenes are laugh-outloud
funny: keep an eye out for the makeover Cat and Bess give two female police officers for an
undercover job. However, for all the outrageous (and eye-opening) focus on makeup, beauty, fashion, and,
of course, the desire to be thin, there are tantalizing glimpses of the vulnerability and insecurities beneath
the surface, especially with Cat, who longs for her home in Brussels, the smell of her mother's horses, and
freedom from the constraints that are put on women in the name of beauty. Death by beauty was never so
much fun.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Bourland, Barbara: I'LL EAT WHEN I'M DEAD." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A485105214/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=dd96b140.
Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A485105214
1/27/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1517086052414 2/3
I'll Eat When I'm Dead
Annie Bostrom
Booklist.
113.15 (Apr. 1, 2017): p24+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
I'll Eat When I'm Dead.
By Barbara Bourland.
May 2017. 336p. Grand Central, $27 (9781455595211); e-book, $13.99 (9781455595228).
When her boss and longtime friend, Hillary Whitney, died last spring, alone in a sad, windowless room in
the RAGE fashion magazine offices, Cat Ono suspected something beyond the cardiac arrest caused by
Hillary's excessive thinness that the investigation ruled. Months later, Detective Mark Hutton is cracking the
case back open, starting with a surprise interview with Cat. His handsomeness, charm, and surprisingly
good style certainly help smooth over prickly Cat's annoyance that the NYPD bungled things the first time.
Details behind Hillary's death are revealed merely halfway through the book, before Cat's job at RAGE
takes a major turn, which she doesn't handle well, and further, occasionally unwieldy intrigue unfurls.
Former magazine writer and web producer Bourland fills her debut with terrific characters--Cat especially is
wonderfully weird and well dimensioned--and a heaping helping of froth and gloss that will turn readers
into industry insiders. Delightfully, playfully skewering the fashion and beauty industries, this is like The
Devil Wears Prada (2003) with more feminism, plus murder.--Annie Bostrom
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Bostrom, Annie. "I'll Eat When I'm Dead." Booklist, 1 Apr. 2017, p. 24+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491487867/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=32b5e672.
Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491487867
1/27/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1517086052414 3/3
I'll Eat When I'm Dead
Publishers Weekly.
264.12 (Mar. 20, 2017): p52.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
I'll Eat When I'm Dead
Barbara Bourland. Grand Central, $27 (336p)
ISBN 978-1-4555-9521-1
In her debut, Bourland attempts to update The Devil Wears Prada and kick it up a notch with the story of a
thoroughly modern assistant editor at a Vogue-like fashion magazine who teams up with an NYPD detective
to solve a murder mystery. The action begins when editor Hillary Whitney's body, in Dior pumps, is
discovered on the floor of a Rage Fashion Book workroom. Police conclude she died from a heart attack
caused by extreme dieting, but they reopen the case after seeing a cryptic message she sent her brother. Det.
Mark Sutton interviews Hillary's silk-and-leather-clad friend and assistant, Flemish-Japanese Cat Ono,
prompting Cat to try to dig up more about Hillary's untimely demise. As 'Rage struggles to compete against
online startup Mania, Cat assists Hillary's replacement (the ambitious socialite Lou), while tracking
Hillary's designer eye drops to an upscale Brooklyn cosmetics shop, then joining forces with friends and the
police to uncover the shop's secrets. Bourland narrates at a quick New York City tempo, detailing perks,
personal connections, and property values, both satirizing and celebrating fashion and feminism. Will the
hot cop and the cool fashionista hook up? Can Rage pivot to adjust to a changing market? Can its
employees pivot without ruining their stilettos? Do crimes committed by the cosmetics firm go beyond
overcharging? The writing is stylish even when the answers are obvious. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"I'll Eat When I'm Dead." Publishers Weekly, 20 Mar. 2017, p. 52. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A487601744/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1a10208d.
Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A487601744