Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years (2019 original; edició 2019)

My review of this book can be found on my YouTube Vlog at:

https://youtu.be/PB3QRXXTLZM

Enjoy! ( )

I love memoirs and this one was recommended/selected as our April book club pick, so I was looking forward to learning about the woman who played Mary Poppins and Maria in The Sound of Music. Sadly, I was disappointed. There was more family drama in this book than in all her plays, movies, and TV specials combined. I lost patience with her impulsive, childish, hypochondriac, suicidal second husband Blake Edwards, her selfish mother, her drug-addicted brother, and how Julie repeatedly defended them as they took advantage of her generous nature. It was admirable that she continued to support them, but unfortunately she ends up as a doormat.

I don't mind reading about wealthy celebrities, but an entire 300+ page book of flying back and forth from London to France to Hollywood to Switzerland, buying boats and houses, hiring nannies and tutors and psychoanalysts, as well as various relatives visiting hospital emergency rooms in almost every chapter - I was waiting for introspection and honesty and personal revelations rather than just bits and pieces fleshed out from her journals chronicling the Hollywood years. Co-authored with her oldest daughter, Emma, the book felt as if they had made an agreement that Julie would only share narrative, not how she truly felt during all the chaos and upheaval she lived through. What I learned from this memoir is a confirmation of the adage "money can't buy happiness." ( )

I knew very little about Julie Andrews other than I enjoyed a few of her movies, but came away from this memoir astonished at all that she has endured and wrestled with. For many years she was caring for her children and her husband's children, her siblings, her ill husband, both sets of parents and their spouses in addition to an aunt. "Home Work" indeed! Really honest, open and interesting book. ( )

With this second memoir, Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years, Andrews picks up the story with her arrival in Hollywood and her phenomenal rise to fame in her earliest films — Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. Andrews describes her years in the film industry — from the incredible highs to the challenging lows. Not only does she discuss her work in now-classic films and her collaborations with giants of cinema and television, she also unveils her personal story of adjusting to a new and often daunting world, dealing with the demands of unimaginable success, being a new mother, the end of her first marriage, embracing two stepchildren, adopting two more children, and falling in love with the brilliant and mercurial Blake Edwards. The pair worked together in numerous films, including Victor/Victoria, the gender-bending comedy that garnered multiple Oscar nominations. ( )

Told with her trademark charm and candor, Julie Andrews recounts her arrival in Hollywood and her meteoric rise to fame in her earliest films —Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, while unveiling her personal struggle to adjust to the notoriety.