Light entertainment from a witty woman.
A breezy little volume by an actress facing old age with aplomb.
Now in her late 60s, Keaton, an Academy Award winner in 1977 for her role in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, sprinkles memories of her long career, including her friendships and more with certain leading men, into a mishmash of thoughts about childhood, beauty and parenting. The author’s attitude toward her own physical flaws—drooping eyes, a less-than-perfect nose, thinning hair—is meant to be reassuring to self-critical female readers. There is a rationale behind the omnipresent hats, tinted glasses and turtlenecks that other women might consider, but Keaton’s message is that everyone should do their own thing. Never married, she is raising two adopted children, now teenagers, who figure prominently in the narrative. Even movie stars, it seems, have ordinary parenting problems and bad days. Woven into the domestic scenes are recollections of film roles and fellow actors. Readers looking for chitchat about celebrities will be gratified; Keaton drops plenty of names, although at times, they seem to be somewhat forcefully injected into her narrative. The author is generous in her comments about others, giving full credit to her longtime friend Allen for launching her career and speaking well of the leading men in her life. For the record, Keaton reports that Warren Beatty, her co-star in Reds, had a pretty face, but Al Pacino, with whom she acted in the Godfather films, had a beautiful one. There are no illustrations; however, Keaton’s eye for detail makes them unnecessary. One caveat: The text is exceedingly brief, an afternoon’s read at best. The type is heavily leaded to fill out the pages, giving the impression that there’s more than is being delivered.
Light entertainment from a witty woman.Pub Date: April 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9426-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Not as focused as Just Kids, but an atmospheric, moody, and bittersweet memoir to be savored and pondered.
Iconic poet, writer, and artist Smith (Just Kids, 2010, etc.) articulates the pensive rhythm of her life through the stations of her travels.
Spending much of her time crouched in a corner table of a Greenwich Village cafe sipping coffee, jotting quixotic notes in journals, and “plotting my next move,” the author reflects on the places she’s visited, the personal intercourse, and the impact each played on her past and present selves. She describes a time in 1978 when she planned to open her own cafe, but her plans changed following a chance meeting with MC5 guitarist Fred Sonic Smith, who swiftly stole and sealed her heart with marriage and children. A graceful, ruminative tour guide, Smith writes of traveling together with Fred armed with a vintage 1967 Polaroid to Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni in northwest French Guiana, then of solitary journeys to Frida Kahlo’s Mexican Casa Azul and to the graves of Sylvia Plath, Jean Genet, and a swath of legendary Japanese filmmakers. After being seduced by Rockaway Beach in Queens and indulgently purchasing a ramshackle bungalow there, the property was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy—though she vowed to rebuild. In a hazy, often melancholy narrative, the author synchronizes past memories and contemporary musings on books, art, and Michigan life with Fred. Preferring to write productively from the comfort of her bed, Smith vividly describes herself as “an optimistic zombie propped up by pillows, producing pages of somnambulistic fruit.” She spent seasons of lethargy binge-watching crime TV, arguing with her remote control, venturing out to a spontaneous and awkward meeting with chess great Bobby Fischer, and trekking off to interview Paul Bowles in Tangiers. No matter the distance life may take her, Smith always recovers some semblance of normalcy with the simplistic pleasures of a deli coffee on her Gotham stoop, her mind constantly buoyed by humanity, art, and memory.
Not as focused as Just Kids, but an atmospheric, moody, and bittersweet memoir to be savored and pondered.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-87510-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
SEEN & HEARD
Brimming with open introspection, engaging anecdotes, and gorgeous photographs, Field’s moving account sheds light on how...
A beloved actor attempts to assemble her fragmented past.
In her debut memoir, Field (b. 1946) takes to the page to explore her early life and storied acting career; she also pens an extended love letter to her mother, who died in 2011, on the author’s 65th birthday. Described by the author as “drop-your-jaw beautiful,” Margaret Morlan was discovered by a Paramount talent scout while sitting in a Pasadena Playhouse audience and instantly got a career at age 23. Affectionately called “Baa” by Field, Morlan never achieved anywhere near her eldest daughter’s screen credits, but she played a central role throughout Field’s life as both a peerless champion of and “backup generator” to her daughter’s burgeoning talents. Baa was also a complicated source of great psychological trauma, as she failed to protect her daughter from the sexual advances of her stepfather, stuntman Jock Mahoney. While the memoir details the rapid progression of Field’s childhood interest in acting to on-screen success in TV (from Gidget and The Flying Nun to winning the Emmy for Sybil in 1977) and film (for Norma Rae, she won “every award for best actress that existed in the United States”), Field’s narrative of her professional and personal achievements may be best viewed through the lens of her fraught relationship with Baa. “My cherished mother had known…something,” she writes. “What exactly that was, I didn’t want to hear, because even at that time, when I was middle-aged, I couldn’t bear the idea that she hadn’t run to my side….I had accepted the idea that I was broken in an effort to keep my mother whole.” Through acting, Field found a way to constitute herself: “By standing in Norma’s shoes, I felt my own feet. If I could play her, I could be me.”
Brimming with open introspection, engaging anecdotes, and gorgeous photographs, Field’s moving account sheds light on how playing larger-than-life figures has enabled her to keep her feet on the ground.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5387-6302-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2018
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