A forthright revelation of hard-won survival.
A Hollywood star recollects a traumatic past.
In an affecting debut memoir, Moore, now in her mid-50s, looks back on an undeniably successful acting career—her salary for Striptease made her the “highest-paid actress in Hollywood”—and a life marked by pain. Both parents were alcoholics. Her mother, eventually diagnosed as bipolar, repeatedly attempted suicide, and her father was a gambler whose debts kept the family on the move to outrun loan sharks and creditors. “It’s possible,” she writes, “that all the adapting I had to do primed me to become an actress: it was my job to portray whatever character I thought would be most popular in every new school, in every new town.” What also primed her was an overwhelming need to be valued. At 16, having left home, quit school, and moved in with a married guitarist nearly twice her age, Moore posed for nude photos for Japanese magazines. That photo shoot led to modeling assignments, giving her a first “tiny taste of success” and an “empowering” feeling of pride—but also constant self-scrutiny about her looks, weight, and attractiveness. Suffering from low self-esteem, she often escaped into drink. Just after turning 20, Moore landed her first real movie role in Blame It on Rio; on location in Brazil, she supplemented alcohol with so much cocaine that she “nearly burned a hole through my nostrils.” Soon she was an addict. Forced to enter rehab as a condition for a part in St. Elmo’s Fire, Moore now wonders if she would have survived without that intervention; even so, she later relapsed several times. The author makes much of her love for her three daughters, who witnessed her “gradual downward spiral” into substance abuse and who refused contact with her for three years. She recounts her marriages to Freddy Moore, Bruce Willis, and Ashton Kushner; offers fresh anecdotes about her experiences on the set of movies such as Ghost and G.I. Jane; and reflects on the demons that finally led her to seek therapy.
A forthright revelation of hard-won survival.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-204953-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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