Hollywood publicist Harris, the author of Unexposed Film (2012), offers more memories from iconic movie sets of the 2000s—this time as the backdrop to his own real-life love story.
After being widowed in his 30s, the Los Angeles–based author threw himself into the nomadic life of on-location film shoots, “the further from home, the better.” The wanderlust didn’t fade with the grief, however, and it pushed his second marriage to Margaret,a musician and the mother of his two sons, to the breaking point. In colorful but earnest prose, Harris examines his complicated history with love, his film career, and the intersection of the two in 2003 when he was in London; Fort Ricasoli, Malta; and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, working on the film Troy (2004), starring Brad Pitt. It was a difficult shoot, and Harris dealt with everything from mutinying extras to publicity mishaps to dysentery. He also missed his sons, Casey and Sam, at home with their mom in Ithaca, New York; he worried especially about Casey, a teen craving independence despite his struggles with visual impairment and kidney disease. During the shoot, Harris met Nicola, a journalist with whom he had an instant connection. The two began an affair that led to the author’s divorce, culminating in an unconventional wedding ceremony in South Africa during the filming of Blood Diamond (2006). Alongside his personal life, Harris chronicles the ups and downs of other productions, including Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) and Syriana (2005). Harris is most likable when he’s in work mode, shining a light on the lives of the unknown people who make movies happen, including makeup artists, caterers, and frazzled assistants. The celebrity cameos by Pitt, Peter O’Toole, George Clooney, and others are dazzling, but Harris wisely focuses on his own story. The romance aspect is entertaining but sometimes irksome, as the author gushes about Nicola one minute and admits to texting an old fling the next (after Nicola gave her number to another man). Still, it all works out in the end, and the epilogue gives an update on the family that’s genuinely touching.
A glitzy but never sugary tale of love, work, and family.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-83803-242-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Zuleika
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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BOOK REVIEW
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
15
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More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SELF-HELP
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PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
11
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All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
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