MacLaine is wickedly honest about moviemaking, sincere and enthusiastic in describing her beliefs, and welcoming in the...
The award-winning actress reflects on her latest film and her previous life.
MacLaine, a talented woman who believes in reincarnation, is getting a lot out of this life. She’s acted in more than 50 films and written 14 books, including this one. At 81, she’s acting in another film and writing a book about it. Wild Oats (2016), a screwball comedy about an elderly woman (MacLaine) who mistakenly receives a very large social security check and decides to take her friend (Jessica Lange) on a lavish vacation, was over five years in the making and $500,000 in debt before it even started shooting in the Canary Islands, which some believed “were the remnants of Atlantis.” After the musical chairs of finalizing actors and director and with funding somewhat secured, the cast was flown to the island’s opulent Lopesan resort, and her “adventure” began. She writes in a jaunty, casual, daily diary style, providing affectionate portraits of her fellow actors: Billy Connolly (in one scene, “he made me laugh so hard, I nearly developed a herniated disk), Lange (“beautiful, intense, and a brilliant dramatic actress”), Demi Moore (sweet…and nervous”), and Howard Hesseman (“adorably funny”).” MacLaine was constantly anxious about the ongoing efforts to raise funds, calling it “amateur hour,” and at one point worried, “Why am I here? Are we going to shoot a movie…or ourselves?” However, it ended well: “It had all been worth it to me for so many reasons.” The author’s insider’s portrait of the moviemaking world sparkles, but it’s dimmer when she engages in her New Age ruminations (“I feel that I am in alignment with my soul’s destiny”).
MacLaine is wickedly honest about moviemaking, sincere and enthusiastic in describing her beliefs, and welcoming in the skepticism of others—it’s all refreshing and fun.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-3641-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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