HOW TO BE THE HERO OF YOUR OWN LIFE

King’s memoir follows a writer’s spirit from reincarnation to life in Hollywood and beyond.

The narrative opens in the afterlife, where a disembodied voice asks the author if she wishes to return to Earth for another human life. “What? No!” she protests, before negotiating the details of her reincarnation with ethereal guides, haggling over clauses for love, children, and a good sense of humor. King narrates her conception, birth, and early years with a cosmic detachment, using chapter titles such as “The Mercurial Nature of the Human Mind at Six and Three Quarters.” As a teenager, she became a cheerleader and edited the school paper, guided by an innate sense of purpose. The story moves swiftly, with each chapter distilled into a single vivid memory, like King’s first time on the radio. After college, she moved to Los Angeles to work in television and struggled as a freelance writer (“Free as in not being paid”). The author met her future husband—her “Beloved”—by chance at a party when she was 26. In her 40s, she published How To Write a Movie in 21 Days (1988), gaining hard-won recognition at last. Throughout the text, King’s prose shines when her humor and inventiveness take the lead. Her afterlife negotiations feel sharp and witty—when told about jobs, she replies, “There must be another way”—and her “sledgehammer approach to success” in Hollywood has infectious energy. Short, punchy chapters keep the pace brisk, but the metaphysical scope and the more straightforward autobiographical elements can clash with each other (moments like a butterfly’s wings “affect[ing] the cosmos” feel torn between satire and sincere New Age belief). King is consistently funny, but it’s hard to determine just how much she is poking fun at herself. The Hollywood years are vividly described—especially a harrowing encounter with violence and her brushes with sexism—and this material is filled with real wisdom for anyone interested in the industry, but it also might leave readers perplexed, as it seems light years away from the cheeky, supernatural opening.

This mix of cosmically inflected memoir and Hollywood how-to makes an uneven but engaging trip around the stars.