MANAGING EXPECTATIONS

The veteran actor delivers a memoir in a series of deftly crafted essays.

In her debut, Driver engagingly writes about family dramas, self-doubt, her unruly hair, unexpected motherhood, and the trajectory of her career. She grew up partly in England, with her mother, sister, brother, and the man her mother had recently married; and partly in Barbados, where her father lived. “None of it makes any sense,” she writes about her childhood. “There is no conversation about all this change. New people wander into our landscape and nobody but me thinks it’s weird.” Fed up with Driver’s rudeness toward his girlfriend, her father sent her back to England, which required an overnight stay, alone, at Miami’s Fontainebleau Hotel. Reflecting on her feelings then, she writes, “I always want grown-ups to like me, but find it difficult to behave in a way that seems to consistently please them.” After graduating from acting school, she was despondent about being the only one in her class without an agent. “The place I found myself stuck, at twenty,” she writes, “was being a new adult—still furnished with a child’s dream plan, but being asked to manifest it in a world of adult expectations.” After appearing in the lead role in the 1995 film Circle of Friends, for which she was paid $10,000, Driver expected other offers to roll in. But these were so slow in coming that she took off to Uruguay, where her sister was living with a boyfriend. For the author, beach life seemed a possible future—until she was summoned to New York for an audition. Walking anonymously through the streets of Manhattan, she suddenly felt liberated. “I can consciously decide who I am and not let circumstance or previous damage dictate it,” she gushed to her sister. “I can be the conscious architect of my own life!” Driver’s spirited prose informs all the essays; a standout is her graceful, moving chronicle, radiant with love, of her mother’s last days.

Sharp observations and quirky irreverence make for a delightful read.