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@Barrie Summy
book review blogs
@Barrie Summy
I started this year with a goal to read one book per week. It started well but I haven't been as successful lately. As such, instead of writing a review of a book I loved and highly recommend, I'm going to discuss a book that I didn't really like and will go into detail as to why I did not like it.
I'll start by saying I used to be a fan of Ms. Field. The perception was that she was a kind and caring person. And as such, I was someone who rooted for her in her professional projects. I remember when she got the role of Sybil and all the gossip about how people didn't think she had the acting chops to pull it off, but she did. Things like that.
But I guess it was 10 or 15 years ago that my opinion of her changed and to be honest, I couldn't even say why because I'm not sure. Regardless, now if I watch something she's in it's despite her being in it, rather than because she's in it.
So when her book came out, I had no desire to read it. But since I was on the book-a-week plan, I borrowed it from the library. Actually, I had borrowed it several times to get through it but I think it's one I finished this year.
Anyway, it wasn't an easy read. The writing wasn't good. It wasn't so much of a storytelling experience of her life as a data dump of information. The first 50 pages or so were background on her family - grandmother, great grandmother, etc. I would probably get the people and exact details wrong but one of her relatives was illegitimate and left an orphanage as a teenager and the family was scandalized.
When she gets into her story it all comes from the perspective of her being a victim her whole life. Things happened to her and she was forced or guilted into doing things or projects she did not want to do. For example, she did not want to be in the Flying Nun, after she had declined the role someone contacted her stepfather and he came to visit her and basically told her how ungrateful she was for the opportunity and shamed her into taking it. She was miserable for the entire run.
And speaking of her stepfather, she had a sexual relationship with him. Back when Joan Rivers was still filling in for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, I watched an interview with Ms. Field and she asked at what age Joan had lost her virginity and they decided to tell at the same time. Joan said 21 and Sally said 14. In the book Sally talks about an encounter with her stepfather when she was 14 where both are naked and fondling each other but then says she doesn't have any memory of what happened next but that she didn't talk to him for a long time. Incorporating what I remember from the interview years before and this story, my guess is she lost her virginity with her stepfather but didn't want to admit that in her book.
Beyond that she talks about jobs she took and what she did to get them. She considered sleeping with a director or a producer to get or keep a part as part of the business she was in - even if the man was married - whatever it took to get the job.
She also talks about Burt Reynolds. I have to say here that I have never been a fan of Burt Reynolds - I always felt he was too full of himself. But reading this book, I like him even less than before. Sally was so excited about Sybil and the fact that she was up for an EMMY for her performance but Burt didn't want her to go to the awards show because television awards weren't worthy of his presence and he didn't think she should go without him. So she stayed home with him and watched the show on TV to see she had won.
Then, when she got Norma Rae he got angry that she was even considering taking it because, according to Ms. Field "no woman of his was going to play a whore". Things like that. But she took it. Her mother was watching her kids almost exclusively at times and Burt would give her ultimatums when something would happen to her mother or one of the kids and would tell her to choose - him or them. She often chose him.
So yeah, I wasn't a fan of hers before I read this book and I'm less so after having read it. But, also as I said before, the writing was bad and she takes no responsibility for her own actions and decisions because, to her mind (at least the way it comes across), she's the victim here.
I don't particularly recommend this book but it is one that I've wanted to discuss since I read it, if for no other reason to see if anyone else had read the book and came away with the same or similar take on it.
For more reviews (probably with more favorable opinions of the book reviewed), click on the icon at the top of this post or go to barriesummy.blogspot.com .
