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Managing Expectations: A Memoir in Essays
A charming, poignant, and mesmerizing memoir in essays from beloved actor and natural-born storyteller Minnie Driver, chronicling the way life works out even when it doesn't.
In this intimate, beautifully crafted collection, Driver writes with disarming charm and candor about her bohemian upbringing between England and Barbados; her post-university travails and triumphs--from being the only student in her acting school not taken on by an agent to being discovered at a rave in a muddy field in the English countryside; shooting to fame in one of the most influential films of the 1990s and being nominated for an Academy Award; and finding the true light of her life, her son. She chronicles her unconventional career path, including the time she gave up on acting to sell jeans in Uruguay, her journey as a single parent, and the heartbreaking loss of her mother.
Like Lena Dunham in Not That Kind of Girl, Gabrielle Union in We're Going to Need More Wine and Patti Smith in Just Kids, Driver writes with razor-sharp humor and grace as she explores navigating the depths of failure, fighting for success, discovering the unmatched wonder and challenge of motherhood, and wading through immeasurable grief. Effortlessly charming, deeply funny, personal, and honest, Managing Expectations reminds us of the way life works out--even when it doesn't.
In this intimate, beautifully crafted collection, Driver writes with disarming charm and candor about her bohemian upbringing between England and Barbados; her post-university travails and triumphs--from being the only student in her acting school not taken on by an agent to being discovered at a rave in a muddy field in the English countryside; shooting to fame in one of the most influential films of the 1990s and being nominated for an Academy Award; and finding the true light of her life, her son. She chronicles her unconventional career path, including the time she gave up on acting to sell jeans in Uruguay, her journey as a single parent, and the heartbreaking loss of her mother.
Like Lena Dunham in Not That Kind of Girl, Gabrielle Union in We're Going to Need More Wine and Patti Smith in Just Kids, Driver writes with razor-sharp humor and grace as she explores navigating the depths of failure, fighting for success, discovering the unmatched wonder and challenge of motherhood, and wading through immeasurable grief. Effortlessly charming, deeply funny, personal, and honest, Managing Expectations reminds us of the way life works out--even when it doesn't.
Audible Audio
First published May 3, 2022
278 people are currently reading
6225 people want to read
About the author
Minnie Driver
1 book59 followersMinnie Driver is an author, actor, musician, and podcaster. In her different creative fields, she has been nominated for an Oscar, several Emmys, and a Screen Actors Guild Award, and she has toured extensively and opened for REM, Coldplay, and Crowded House.
Her writing has been prolific, but never for public consumption until now, with the advent of her first book, Managing Expectations.
Minnie lives in California and London with her son, Henry, her boyfriend, Addison, and her dog, Bob.
Her writing has been prolific, but never for public consumption until now, with the advent of her first book, Managing Expectations.
Minnie lives in California and London with her son, Henry, her boyfriend, Addison, and her dog, Bob.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 933 reviews
August 25, 2022
Audiobook….read by Minnie Driver
…..6 hours and 48 minutes
The pandemic created an outbreak growth of memoirs.
Covid was the inspiration for Minnie too.
Her storytelling— story-ish-styling give these essays a unique flair.
I offer my highest compliment to Minnie Driver.
As one reviewer said:
She’s……
“classy and sassy”!
I enjoyed her stories:
my goodness > a few were hilarious!!! REALLY FUNNY!!
…(don’t get me started) > I could start rolling on the floor peeing my pants laughing at a couple of stories she told).
I also came away with the highest respect for her integrity- to stand for what’s right when there is little agreement to do so.
Minnie Driver is smart —unflinchingly honest— has the greatest hair- smile - face -stature - with one of the world’s greatest voices.
Her talent for accents are instantly charming.
… although I did feel a little embarrassed for her when she started singing (all in fun) -a treat for the audiobook listeners.
I’m sorry for the loss of Minnie’s mother to cancer in Dec. 2021.
From the death bed - last few days of living and dying -Minne’s mom talked about food — great meals shared —
It was a timeless surreal sad and beautiful time — being with mom for days just before dying.
Oh and her mom loved books!
Books were ‘major’ in their family. ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ was as big of a hit for Mom&Minnie story time togetherness as it was for me and Katy (my oldest daughter)….
I couldn’t even count how many times we read ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ together.
Minnie’s mother died on Dec. 11th (my own wedding anniversary date).
You know — it’s not easy writing reviews for memoirs.
This is a persons precious life - their stories - their blood, sweat, and tears….
These type of books (so I hear) are not for everyone.
But I learn, grow, and am enchanted by people — all types of people —
I like learning about their pains- their joys- their accomplishments and personal pride.
Minnie had her share of battles. (starting with boarding school as a child)…
Then teen and adult life battles intertwined with ‘the good stuff’.
—both in her private and public life…..[love, loss, grief]
Lots of down-home-fun times too!!
Great awards and many human every day rewards!!
Its a privilege to experience firsthand just how ‘smart-as-a-whip-articulate’ Minnie Driver is to boot!!!
Lovely book!!
…..6 hours and 48 minutes
The pandemic created an outbreak growth of memoirs.
Covid was the inspiration for Minnie too.
Her storytelling— story-ish-styling give these essays a unique flair.
I offer my highest compliment to Minnie Driver.
As one reviewer said:
She’s……
“classy and sassy”!
I enjoyed her stories:
my goodness > a few were hilarious!!! REALLY FUNNY!!
…(don’t get me started) > I could start rolling on the floor peeing my pants laughing at a couple of stories she told).
I also came away with the highest respect for her integrity- to stand for what’s right when there is little agreement to do so.
Minnie Driver is smart —unflinchingly honest— has the greatest hair- smile - face -stature - with one of the world’s greatest voices.
Her talent for accents are instantly charming.
… although I did feel a little embarrassed for her when she started singing (all in fun) -a treat for the audiobook listeners.
I’m sorry for the loss of Minnie’s mother to cancer in Dec. 2021.
From the death bed - last few days of living and dying -Minne’s mom talked about food — great meals shared —
It was a timeless surreal sad and beautiful time — being with mom for days just before dying.
Oh and her mom loved books!
Books were ‘major’ in their family. ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ was as big of a hit for Mom&Minnie story time togetherness as it was for me and Katy (my oldest daughter)….
I couldn’t even count how many times we read ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ together.
Minnie’s mother died on Dec. 11th (my own wedding anniversary date).
You know — it’s not easy writing reviews for memoirs.
This is a persons precious life - their stories - their blood, sweat, and tears….
These type of books (so I hear) are not for everyone.
But I learn, grow, and am enchanted by people — all types of people —
I like learning about their pains- their joys- their accomplishments and personal pride.
Minnie had her share of battles. (starting with boarding school as a child)…
Then teen and adult life battles intertwined with ‘the good stuff’.
—both in her private and public life…..[love, loss, grief]
Lots of down-home-fun times too!!
Great awards and many human every day rewards!!
Its a privilege to experience firsthand just how ‘smart-as-a-whip-articulate’ Minnie Driver is to boot!!!
Lovely book!!
Read
July 29, 2022Oh I loved this audiobook so much. I think I fell in love with Minnie a little the first time I watched Good Will Hunting (a film I still adore) but I've never had much of a sense of who she is as a person. This book made me love her even more. She comes across as the sort of person who'd be a wonderful friend - a friend who is scatty and strong willed and eccentric and honest and wild and free. In this memoir the listener dips in and out of various scenes in her life, almost film-like in their telling and she's such a beautiful writer as well as a narrator/actress. The chapter about her mother's death floored me. Highly recommended.
May 20, 2022
Charming and moving and very well written, this memoir by the actress (and musician) Minnie Driver is a series of ten essays which start in childhood when she is an unhappy boarder at her school in Hampshire (not too far from where I live), and finish with the poignant and wise (without being sentimental) essay about the death of her mother. In between are her first break into acting, the end of a significant relationship, and the birth of her son. Don't expect a celebrity tell-all, this is so much more. I'm looking forward to see what she writes next. I listened to it as an audio book, read by the author, which has a bonus interview at the end, but sadly (of course) not the photograph of Driver's mother which is included at the end of the other editions. I would have loved to see Gaynor, standing with her hands on her hips.
August 29, 2022
This celebrity's guardedness and walls are way up as we learn very little about Minnie Driver in a disappointing autobiography that only gives glimpses of her life story. There are just 5 or 6 real stories within, the rest of it being small thoughts about different times of her life with few specifics and huge gaps in her timeline. And if you're looking for any insights into her film or TV work you'll find none here because she says nothing about her work on sets and skips most of her productions.
This is not the typical memoir. It starts with her wild-child years from around 6 to 11. She seems proud of the fact that she's horrible at an early age, constantly running away. Some can be attributed to her unmarried parents--a wildly blunt single mother and an initially distant father who lives away with another women--but Minnie comes across as simply mean and rude. The family situation, like most of the rest of the book, is very confusing and Driver never feels the need to give readers enough information or specifics.
There is a harrowing tale of her at age 11 being so bad to her father's girlfriend that she's shipped off on an airplane to Miami and stays alone for 24 hours at the Fontainebleau Hotel. Just when you feel sorry for her she reveals that she got back at her dad by over-ordering room service and buying up dozens of expensive items in the gift shop, as well as staying in a strange Hispanic man's cabana for the afternoon. It's weird.
Suddenly she's acting, though we don't know how or why she was given her first role because she just jumps ahead a decade and suddenly she's out of college and in a movie. The entire book is like this, where she provides only a few pieces to her life story, and she is often depressed or melancholy for no reason since we don't have enough of her history to understand. Picture Minnie Driver's life as a 1000-piece puzzle, but she only gives us 50 pieces here to assemble the picture.
In two cases the adult stories are fleshed out a bit more. After only hinting at other men in her life, the first is her dating Matt Damon. It is an abnormal revelation that is obviously meant to skewer the famous actor who dumped her without notice. Minnie, all these years later, is still miffed and upset, and Damon looks like a real bad guy.
Second is the only really great story in the book, about her attempting to break police lines to get back to her fire-ravaged Malibu home by contacting a world adventurer who takes her in by boat and storms the beach, evading the guns of the Coast Guard that is on their tails. She doesn't tell us who this guy is, just a first name, but I had to look him up online to find out it's the current man in her life. She also doesn't name the father of her child in the book even though that's public knowledge that she admitted to years ago. While Driver might think this is being coy or private, why was she given a book contract for a memoir if she wasn't going to tell complete stories about named individuals she had discussed publicly in other media?
I went online and found more out about her life in a few minutes of Google searching than I did on these pages. It led me to wonder why she failed to mention being raped at 17 or some very significant films and relationships that she freely talks about in magazine and TV interviews!
Driver starts and ends the memoir with her mother, but that is a mistake because the woman comes across as more of a negative in the actress's life. Her father grows to be a more practical empowering figure but only is given a minor role.
It's not poorly written but most of it is incomplete and despite the subtitle these are not really "essays." The front cover photo of her as a smiling child (failing to reflect the book's content of her as a sad, mean youngster) should have instead had the photo on the back cover of adult Driver at a steering wheel, because a number of significant stories revolve around her and a car. And the title of the book is bad--how can you have such a great last name and not use it somehow in the book's title? (BTW, first name is not really Minnie though she doesn't mention it here, thanks Google!)
Overall it's poorly conceived, too short, most of the stories are minor, and it should satisfy no one. Those that gives this a 4-star or 5-star review are simply buying in to the idea that anything that a celebrity makes public, no matter how small, is to be celebrated. Instead it should be viewed as us being tricked into buying a large puzzle that's missing hundreds and hundreds of pieces.
This is not the typical memoir. It starts with her wild-child years from around 6 to 11. She seems proud of the fact that she's horrible at an early age, constantly running away. Some can be attributed to her unmarried parents--a wildly blunt single mother and an initially distant father who lives away with another women--but Minnie comes across as simply mean and rude. The family situation, like most of the rest of the book, is very confusing and Driver never feels the need to give readers enough information or specifics.
There is a harrowing tale of her at age 11 being so bad to her father's girlfriend that she's shipped off on an airplane to Miami and stays alone for 24 hours at the Fontainebleau Hotel. Just when you feel sorry for her she reveals that she got back at her dad by over-ordering room service and buying up dozens of expensive items in the gift shop, as well as staying in a strange Hispanic man's cabana for the afternoon. It's weird.
Suddenly she's acting, though we don't know how or why she was given her first role because she just jumps ahead a decade and suddenly she's out of college and in a movie. The entire book is like this, where she provides only a few pieces to her life story, and she is often depressed or melancholy for no reason since we don't have enough of her history to understand. Picture Minnie Driver's life as a 1000-piece puzzle, but she only gives us 50 pieces here to assemble the picture.
In two cases the adult stories are fleshed out a bit more. After only hinting at other men in her life, the first is her dating Matt Damon. It is an abnormal revelation that is obviously meant to skewer the famous actor who dumped her without notice. Minnie, all these years later, is still miffed and upset, and Damon looks like a real bad guy.
Second is the only really great story in the book, about her attempting to break police lines to get back to her fire-ravaged Malibu home by contacting a world adventurer who takes her in by boat and storms the beach, evading the guns of the Coast Guard that is on their tails. She doesn't tell us who this guy is, just a first name, but I had to look him up online to find out it's the current man in her life. She also doesn't name the father of her child in the book even though that's public knowledge that she admitted to years ago. While Driver might think this is being coy or private, why was she given a book contract for a memoir if she wasn't going to tell complete stories about named individuals she had discussed publicly in other media?
I went online and found more out about her life in a few minutes of Google searching than I did on these pages. It led me to wonder why she failed to mention being raped at 17 or some very significant films and relationships that she freely talks about in magazine and TV interviews!
Driver starts and ends the memoir with her mother, but that is a mistake because the woman comes across as more of a negative in the actress's life. Her father grows to be a more practical empowering figure but only is given a minor role.
It's not poorly written but most of it is incomplete and despite the subtitle these are not really "essays." The front cover photo of her as a smiling child (failing to reflect the book's content of her as a sad, mean youngster) should have instead had the photo on the back cover of adult Driver at a steering wheel, because a number of significant stories revolve around her and a car. And the title of the book is bad--how can you have such a great last name and not use it somehow in the book's title? (BTW, first name is not really Minnie though she doesn't mention it here, thanks Google!)
Overall it's poorly conceived, too short, most of the stories are minor, and it should satisfy no one. Those that gives this a 4-star or 5-star review are simply buying in to the idea that anything that a celebrity makes public, no matter how small, is to be celebrated. Instead it should be viewed as us being tricked into buying a large puzzle that's missing hundreds and hundreds of pieces.
December 26, 2024
Funny and sad, a good collection of reflections. Growing up in England, I could relate to a lot in these memories. Driving around the M25 looking for the secret rave location was one I haven't thought about in a very long time! The last chapter about losing her mother was heartfelt and something I could also, unfortunately, relate to.
November 30, 2022
Minnie Driver's Managing Expectations was recommended by many trusted book friends and it's a well-written and at times, very entertaining book, if not particularly insightful.
I listened to the audiobook which is narrated by Driver herself. I liked parts of it a lot - particularly the last essay about her mother's death which was very poignant and moving. Driver has a clever way with words and uses dialogue a lot to convey the humour in the many situations she describes. It's hard not to think that a lot of the scenes are re-imagined as opposed to remembered, as there are extensive passages of dialogue of events from twenty or thirty years ago. However, as it's a memoir in essays as opposed to a linear autobiography, it works.
There were other parts of the book that I found dragged a bit. The chapter on the Malibu fire and some of the early chapters (in particular, the one where she spent the night alone in a hotel after annoying her father's new partner) are drawn out. There's an interview at the end between Minnie and her best friend (writer Emma Forrest) which I tuned out of. I think if I'm honest, I found Driver a bit annoying by that point! 3/5
I listened to the audiobook which is narrated by Driver herself. I liked parts of it a lot - particularly the last essay about her mother's death which was very poignant and moving. Driver has a clever way with words and uses dialogue a lot to convey the humour in the many situations she describes. It's hard not to think that a lot of the scenes are re-imagined as opposed to remembered, as there are extensive passages of dialogue of events from twenty or thirty years ago. However, as it's a memoir in essays as opposed to a linear autobiography, it works.
There were other parts of the book that I found dragged a bit. The chapter on the Malibu fire and some of the early chapters (in particular, the one where she spent the night alone in a hotel after annoying her father's new partner) are drawn out. There's an interview at the end between Minnie and her best friend (writer Emma Forrest) which I tuned out of. I think if I'm honest, I found Driver a bit annoying by that point! 3/5
December 31, 2022
I always want grown-ups to like me but find it difficult to behave in a way that seems to consistently please them. Grown-up love appears to be very conditional, and they are not conditions I can really abide by - not for long, anyway. One minute they’re laughing at the fact that I know what “existential” means and the next moment they’re all “Can you shut up now? You’re really getting on my nerves.”
I think this quote, taken from an essay/chapter called “I’m Going to Miami”, reveals a lot about Minnie Driver’s personality - true when she was a child, and probably still true. She describes herself (and also her signature mop of hair) as “a lot”: she has a big, emotional personality, she asks a lot of questions, and she doesn’t know how to not be herself, even though her chosen vocation is acting (and also singing and writing).
This memoir gives you a good sense of Minnie’s Driver’s personality, passions, and unorthodox life: she’s funny, intelligent, and she knows how to tell a story. Although she had a lot of success in her early 20s, in an important sense - certainly in terms of motherhood and finding a life partner - she was a late bloomer.
The structure of the book is particularly interesting. Driver makes no effort to connect all the dots of her life; instead, the reader gets a series of stories, all representative in their way. It’s Driver’s top ten of the really important stuff, ending with her mother’s death.
By the way, if you enjoy this book I would also highly recommend Driver’s podcast “Minnie Questions”.
June 5, 2022
TITLE: Managing Expectations: A Memoir in Essays
AUTHOR: Minnie Driver
PUB DATE: 05.03.2022 Now Available
A charming, poignant, and mesmerizing memoir in essays from beloved actor and natural-born storyteller Minnie Driver, chronicling the way life works out even when it doesn’t.
REVIEW:
I am a fan of Minnie Driver ever since seeing her for the first time with John Cusack in Grosse Pointe Black, and of course as Skylar in Good Will Hunting. I just love the way this memoir was written that feels like on point and witty musings about the nuances of life, motherhood, and of course Hollywood. I thought it was witty, whip smart, and deeply observant. I loved getting to know Minnie Driver in this compelling and charmingly heartfelt memoir. I recommend highly!
AUTHOR: Minnie Driver
PUB DATE: 05.03.2022 Now Available
A charming, poignant, and mesmerizing memoir in essays from beloved actor and natural-born storyteller Minnie Driver, chronicling the way life works out even when it doesn’t.
REVIEW:
I am a fan of Minnie Driver ever since seeing her for the first time with John Cusack in Grosse Pointe Black, and of course as Skylar in Good Will Hunting. I just love the way this memoir was written that feels like on point and witty musings about the nuances of life, motherhood, and of course Hollywood. I thought it was witty, whip smart, and deeply observant. I loved getting to know Minnie Driver in this compelling and charmingly heartfelt memoir. I recommend highly!
November 14, 2022
**AUDIOBOOK EDITION***
Normally I don't go in for celebrity memoirs because gross. But I needed something short-ish to listen to on a quick work road trip and this was surprisingly good! Driver doesn't give the usual how I got from there to here and look at me, aren't I grand kind of bullsh*t. Rather, in a series of essays tied to her own life but really about the human experience, she writes with a light touch but great feeling about the human experience. The ending of the book, writing about the death of her mother is particularly touching without being gummy or gross. I really do recommend this book; it's less about a celebrity and more about a human navigating the world in ways we all do. Except, well, she *is* a celebrity. But I'm definitely impressed by a celebrity who writes in their own voice and who can actually write.
Normally I don't go in for celebrity memoirs because gross. But I needed something short-ish to listen to on a quick work road trip and this was surprisingly good! Driver doesn't give the usual how I got from there to here and look at me, aren't I grand kind of bullsh*t. Rather, in a series of essays tied to her own life but really about the human experience, she writes with a light touch but great feeling about the human experience. The ending of the book, writing about the death of her mother is particularly touching without being gummy or gross. I really do recommend this book; it's less about a celebrity and more about a human navigating the world in ways we all do. Except, well, she *is* a celebrity. But I'm definitely impressed by a celebrity who writes in their own voice and who can actually write.
June 14, 2022
A heartfelt and incredibly vulnerable collection of essays from Minnie Driver, detailing her tumultuous childhood sent away to boarding school and the ups and downs of her time in Hollywood. For me, the best chapters were about her experience becoming a mother and coping with her own mother's cancer diagnosis. While she does cover a range of very personal topics, I felt this book was more of a highlight reel rather than an in-depth accounting. I was hoping for a little more depth but overall still a good listen and great on audio read by the author with an interview included at the end.
March 18, 2022
Fantastic! I already really enjoy Minnie Driver but that aside this is a collection of biographical essays that would be great for anyone to read. The last two essays in this collection particularly were fantastic so well written the last one left me crying as it felt deeply personal to me as well absolutely loved this!
July 21, 2022
Loved the format - essays on certain important parts of her life - had me at the first page - “Help me! I’m being abducted!” Highly recommended.
November 17, 2022
I have been a fan of Minnie Driver from the days of "Circle of Friends" I kind of felt like because we both had such unruly curly hair she was my kindred spirit in some ways. After having finished the "I'm Glad My Mom Died" from someone who has suffered so much - reading Minnie Driver's words was refreshing. I still feel like we would be friends after having read her book and I kind of love that she didn't really throw any celebs under the bus or name drop or anything - she just seemed normal (with the exception of Matt Damon and Matt was pretty much a jerk to her when they broke up so I say - good job on that one!). Anyway - just snippets of her life - definitely a memoir I left having more questions than answers but yet the little insights given were just refreshing and honest and real and made me think that pretty much any normal human can write and has had an interesting life.
July 27, 2022
awww i absolutely loved this memoir. i chose to pick it up because bella and i watched good will hunting on the recommendation of ms. wren, but it was absolutely wonderful without even thinking of that movie. each essay packs an emotional punch that helps your understanding of both minnie driver and yourself. it was awesome. the last essay literally almost made me cry. it was sweet, heartwarming, sad, and very moving. ALSO the audiobook experience >>>>. you can really tell that driver likes to read and write because the book is written really well. love
May 26, 2022
Who doesn't love Minnie Driver?!?!?! She's like the poster gal for non-hollywood norm!! This is a short little memoir that I enjoyed so much. Not your typical dishy celebrity reveal but a nice batch of short essays highlighting big moments in her life. Of course the audio is narrated by her personally which I always LOVE. It just had a very sweet and intimate feel about it! Like a tiny window into her world.
May 9, 2022
I absolutely loved this. Driver has such a brilliant way with words, this was a joy to read. An unorthodox life told in a way that allows you in to the world she inhabits and the things she thinks in such a way that you almost feel you know her like a friend. This is funny, challenging and clever and so beautifully written.
October 4, 2022
4.5 stars. So, so beautifully written. Especially the first and the last essays. I am impressed.
Excerpts:
Where is your dad, honey? Has he already checked in?“
I find out at this point that it’s the more Innocuous questions in life that will make me cry. Hard questions, In a difficult situation, will act as an alloy. They’ll make me stronger. It’s the soft questions that have no heat behind them, they are the ones that will be my undoing, particularly in public.
This punishment of mine is becoming multi faceted. I sign the bill with another laborious signature, shrug off what I don’t realize is shame, then head for the pool.
The question arises: what are you supposed to do in a collective when you are alone?
Women sit on the edge with their legs dangling in the water while their children scream mom! Watch this! and then proceed to perform no particular feat beyond splashing around, illustrating some thing I have always known which is that 90% of good parenting is bearing witness.
I feel a rising anger that there is yet another byproduct of this punishment: making the familiar unfamiliar. Making it unsafe. Could all the good things in my life with the removal of a few key elements all become ghosts?
What was bad I thought was the appearance of this line that would always be there. I could choose to cross or not cross but either action will have practical and moral consequences. you speak up, No one hires you. you don’t speak up, you actually feel the good part of you begin to erode.
It was unkind to want her to wake up to my gloom but unfortunately it was written into the contract between sisters that if at any time one party has grown too far apart from the other in terms of outlook balance must be re-dressed by the happier one getting yelled at. I don’t make the rules.
Kafka number four:
She wakes up from the procedure thinking she is dead. It is frightening and surprising. It is frightening and surprising when she realizes she isn’t dead. I sit by her bed holding her hand and she tells me the story. I remember the times that she had done this for me when i was a child, how she had listened. Soon, when a hard story has been fully told, it’s sadness/pain/horror exorcised, its ghost ready to rest, it will start to go in circles if you keep on telling it. Mom‘s voice gets higher as she grips my hand and relives the same awful details again and again. I do what she would’ve done back when I was small and outraged, red faced with some unfairness or pain, caught in the eddy of my story. “Sssshhhhh, sshhh it’s done, it’s done. We are here. You’re all right. Breathe. I know it was terrible. I am here.” Pieces of parenting she gifted me without knowing are pieces of her. Now they are me. Maybe it’s not roles being reversed but rather a relay race that goes round like a story, a happier story.
All we have wanted is to have her home. Home, which is no synonym for sickness. Home, where safety and strength and protection rule. Our army is the comfort of the familiar and this is how we will fight the approaching battle.
I’m dying and I want my breakfast.
Well, I can do something about one of those things.
Can I pick which one, she says, holding my hand tightly.
Yes.
Make the bacon nice and crispy.
We make a menu from all the places we have best loved the food including toast from everywhere. …
All night as she leaves in and out of sleep and deep pain, We talk about food. The nursery food of her childhood, learning to love the disgusting when everything good was rationed during the war, her lifelong love of butter and how bread was good but really just a butter vessel.
We stay encircled by each other’s arms, a closed loop of comfort. No one tells you how birth and death are so closely aligned. Here, lying in the dark, I see it. Pain, a journey that goes towards only one thing, and the deep need to have someone with you to hold onto.
Humans fret about and question what happens beyond the end, Never about what came before our beginning. Closed loops, infinite human experience of beginning and ending so deeply connected, Only one instilling fear. I’m not frightened anymore. We are on an adventure. And this is not some 11th hour reach to spin death into a more palatable destination. We are together, this person who was my portal into life. This rare, funny, independent creature who would do the same for me, walk with me as far as she could, and then wave me off with love, safe in the knowledge that life had equipped me with everything I needed to meet death as the newest of my many experiences.
That night after all the vodka and morphine, as mom slips into and out of consciousness, I lie next to her trying to help as she rides the waves of pain like contractions. “I’ve had such a butterfly life, Min, beautiful, transient.” Suddenly I’m shocked at the sound of her using the past tense to describe her life. Are we already in this place where life has passed and the future is right there, It has nothing in it that we have known. I do not want to let her go.
I feel this as clearly and viscerally as I have ever felt anything. I think again of that thing no one tells you about birth, that as your body offers up your child to the outside world, your very first job as a mother is to let go. I really never thought about the fact that that gift, if you’re lucky, needs to be returned in kind.
Everybody wants it to be more than it just being a journey, Min, But that’s what it is. Death. Life. That’s the meaning of life, it’s a journey.
…. Soft scrambled eggs in the middle of the night. We feed her and standby like sentries in this backwards nursery. Except it’s not backwards. It’s forward moving; it always was. It’s only now, though, that I see the relay race that we were running is up to speed. That, at some point which sprinted by unheralded, she passed on to us in a fluid motion that must’ve taken her over her own particular finish line, The role of protector and caregiver. The role of vibrant, vital woman.
It has only taken the very weakest light of dawn to vanquish the dark.
The solution to a problem is never commensurate with the size of the problem. She told me that… When I was facing some impossible thing that was, of course, ultimately possible because here I am. Here I am, loving her, thanking her for everything. Being glad that she never minded repeating the solution to a lesson I couldn’t seem to learn, never minded my determination to get her to agree with my failure, swatted it away with love and told me with her giant smile that I was terrible and perfect like everybody else.
Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream. Always.
Until the day is night and night becomes the day. Always.
Until the day that is the day that are no more. Always.
I will not say goodbye. Always
Excerpts:
Where is your dad, honey? Has he already checked in?“
I find out at this point that it’s the more Innocuous questions in life that will make me cry. Hard questions, In a difficult situation, will act as an alloy. They’ll make me stronger. It’s the soft questions that have no heat behind them, they are the ones that will be my undoing, particularly in public.
This punishment of mine is becoming multi faceted. I sign the bill with another laborious signature, shrug off what I don’t realize is shame, then head for the pool.
The question arises: what are you supposed to do in a collective when you are alone?
Women sit on the edge with their legs dangling in the water while their children scream mom! Watch this! and then proceed to perform no particular feat beyond splashing around, illustrating some thing I have always known which is that 90% of good parenting is bearing witness.
I feel a rising anger that there is yet another byproduct of this punishment: making the familiar unfamiliar. Making it unsafe. Could all the good things in my life with the removal of a few key elements all become ghosts?
What was bad I thought was the appearance of this line that would always be there. I could choose to cross or not cross but either action will have practical and moral consequences. you speak up, No one hires you. you don’t speak up, you actually feel the good part of you begin to erode.
It was unkind to want her to wake up to my gloom but unfortunately it was written into the contract between sisters that if at any time one party has grown too far apart from the other in terms of outlook balance must be re-dressed by the happier one getting yelled at. I don’t make the rules.
Kafka number four:
She wakes up from the procedure thinking she is dead. It is frightening and surprising. It is frightening and surprising when she realizes she isn’t dead. I sit by her bed holding her hand and she tells me the story. I remember the times that she had done this for me when i was a child, how she had listened. Soon, when a hard story has been fully told, it’s sadness/pain/horror exorcised, its ghost ready to rest, it will start to go in circles if you keep on telling it. Mom‘s voice gets higher as she grips my hand and relives the same awful details again and again. I do what she would’ve done back when I was small and outraged, red faced with some unfairness or pain, caught in the eddy of my story. “Sssshhhhh, sshhh it’s done, it’s done. We are here. You’re all right. Breathe. I know it was terrible. I am here.” Pieces of parenting she gifted me without knowing are pieces of her. Now they are me. Maybe it’s not roles being reversed but rather a relay race that goes round like a story, a happier story.
All we have wanted is to have her home. Home, which is no synonym for sickness. Home, where safety and strength and protection rule. Our army is the comfort of the familiar and this is how we will fight the approaching battle.
I’m dying and I want my breakfast.
Well, I can do something about one of those things.
Can I pick which one, she says, holding my hand tightly.
Yes.
Make the bacon nice and crispy.
We make a menu from all the places we have best loved the food including toast from everywhere. …
All night as she leaves in and out of sleep and deep pain, We talk about food. The nursery food of her childhood, learning to love the disgusting when everything good was rationed during the war, her lifelong love of butter and how bread was good but really just a butter vessel.
We stay encircled by each other’s arms, a closed loop of comfort. No one tells you how birth and death are so closely aligned. Here, lying in the dark, I see it. Pain, a journey that goes towards only one thing, and the deep need to have someone with you to hold onto.
Humans fret about and question what happens beyond the end, Never about what came before our beginning. Closed loops, infinite human experience of beginning and ending so deeply connected, Only one instilling fear. I’m not frightened anymore. We are on an adventure. And this is not some 11th hour reach to spin death into a more palatable destination. We are together, this person who was my portal into life. This rare, funny, independent creature who would do the same for me, walk with me as far as she could, and then wave me off with love, safe in the knowledge that life had equipped me with everything I needed to meet death as the newest of my many experiences.
That night after all the vodka and morphine, as mom slips into and out of consciousness, I lie next to her trying to help as she rides the waves of pain like contractions. “I’ve had such a butterfly life, Min, beautiful, transient.” Suddenly I’m shocked at the sound of her using the past tense to describe her life. Are we already in this place where life has passed and the future is right there, It has nothing in it that we have known. I do not want to let her go.
I feel this as clearly and viscerally as I have ever felt anything. I think again of that thing no one tells you about birth, that as your body offers up your child to the outside world, your very first job as a mother is to let go. I really never thought about the fact that that gift, if you’re lucky, needs to be returned in kind.
Everybody wants it to be more than it just being a journey, Min, But that’s what it is. Death. Life. That’s the meaning of life, it’s a journey.
…. Soft scrambled eggs in the middle of the night. We feed her and standby like sentries in this backwards nursery. Except it’s not backwards. It’s forward moving; it always was. It’s only now, though, that I see the relay race that we were running is up to speed. That, at some point which sprinted by unheralded, she passed on to us in a fluid motion that must’ve taken her over her own particular finish line, The role of protector and caregiver. The role of vibrant, vital woman.
It has only taken the very weakest light of dawn to vanquish the dark.
The solution to a problem is never commensurate with the size of the problem. She told me that… When I was facing some impossible thing that was, of course, ultimately possible because here I am. Here I am, loving her, thanking her for everything. Being glad that she never minded repeating the solution to a lesson I couldn’t seem to learn, never minded my determination to get her to agree with my failure, swatted it away with love and told me with her giant smile that I was terrible and perfect like everybody else.
Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream. Always.
Until the day is night and night becomes the day. Always.
Until the day that is the day that are no more. Always.
I will not say goodbye. Always
September 1, 2023
Tää ei ollut sillä lailla julkkismuistelmakirja, että Minnie Driveristä tarvitsisi tietää hirveästi tai olla kovin kiinnostunutkaan hänen urastaan. Inhimillinen ja rakastettava ja lämmin, harmittaa että tää loppu!
October 10, 2022
If you love a good memoir audiobook read by the author, I highly recommend this one. Minnie’s essays are *so* well written and her life experiences are so freaking cool and interesting. Loved it!
July 14, 2022
Title: Managing Expectations
Author: Minnie Driver
Audiobook Narrator: The Author
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Harper One
Pub Date: May 3, 2022
My Rating: 4
This is a memoir written in 10 essays.
I have always enjoyed Minnie Driver as an actress and her memoir is great.
It is entertaining and at times sad.
Ms. Driver writes with disarming charm and candor about her bohemian upbringing between England and Barbados; her post-university travails and triumphs--from being the only student in her acting school not taken on by an agent to being discovered at a rave in a muddy field in the English countryside; shooting to fame in one of the most influential films of the 1990s and being nominated for an Academy Award; and finding the true light of her life, her son. She chronicles her unconventional career path, including the time she gave up on acting to sell jeans in Uruguay, her journey as a single parent, and the heartbreaking loss of her mother.
Several comments are made that I like and want to remember -
Fans are more emotional when they see an actor trying NOT to cry then when they are actually crying.
Another comment from lyrics in a Bruce Springsteen song. . . .
“A sad man is one who is living in his own skin and doesn’t like the company”
Author: Minnie Driver
Audiobook Narrator: The Author
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Harper One
Pub Date: May 3, 2022
My Rating: 4
This is a memoir written in 10 essays.
I have always enjoyed Minnie Driver as an actress and her memoir is great.
It is entertaining and at times sad.
Ms. Driver writes with disarming charm and candor about her bohemian upbringing between England and Barbados; her post-university travails and triumphs--from being the only student in her acting school not taken on by an agent to being discovered at a rave in a muddy field in the English countryside; shooting to fame in one of the most influential films of the 1990s and being nominated for an Academy Award; and finding the true light of her life, her son. She chronicles her unconventional career path, including the time she gave up on acting to sell jeans in Uruguay, her journey as a single parent, and the heartbreaking loss of her mother.
Several comments are made that I like and want to remember -
Fans are more emotional when they see an actor trying NOT to cry then when they are actually crying.
Another comment from lyrics in a Bruce Springsteen song. . . .
“A sad man is one who is living in his own skin and doesn’t like the company”
September 21, 2022
Okay, I was going to rate this 4 stars originally because I thought it was choppy but when I noticed it was subtitled, "A Memoir in Essays" I bumped it up to five. It's really good and I really liked. Minnie Driver is a talented writer and a charming narrator. She is raw, open, unflinching in her self-judgment but shows restraint and grace when describing others (the noticeable exception being how she eviscerates Harvey Weinstein in just a few sentences.) That's the real beauty of the book: she holds back just enough for the reader to realize that the restraint takes real talent. If a celeb just "tells all" and "names names" they don't have to be good at either storytelling or writing - we just come by for the spew. These are solid, engaging essays on their own merit.
March 5, 2023
Another day another Audiobook review. Firstly, I could listen to Minnie Driver all day. She has a lovely voice, and really performs in a way that made this collection of essays charming, engaging and emotive. I kept this on in the background during the first few days back at work this January, and it felt like having a friend in my ear. These essays are selective and carefully in a way that feels personal, but at the same time reserved (like she didn't want to give too much of herself away). Docked one star, as with most essay collectives I have read I did feel it was disjointed and lacked a bit of flow. Overall, Driver managed to come off as a woman that most could relate to, even when relaying stories about the Oscar campaign for Good Will Hunting.
Definitely worth the listen.
Definitely worth the listen.
May 4, 2022
Mine Driver has written a warm intimate memoir in the form of essays.From a young age she reveals herself to be a strong stubborn brave woman.She draws you in and I felt like I was listening to stories from a close friend.I really enjoyed this book Minnie Driver the wonderful actress also is a gifted author.
February 4, 2022
This book has such a warm intimate feel. It's like someone at a party telling you their very best stories. Or meeting a new friend and bonding immediately.
I enjoyed that the essays were nonlinear. I liked that Ms. Driver only shares what she wants.
I enjoyed that the essays were nonlinear. I liked that Ms. Driver only shares what she wants.
July 29, 2022
I listened to a lot of this audiobook in the car and it felt like Minnie was in the passenger seat telling me stories. I laughed out loud, felt her heartbreak, and tucked away nuggets of her wisdom. A delightful read!
June 24, 2022
Told with candor. Definitely intelligent ruminations on her life's journey without being a tell-all or sleazefest. Interesting
August 26, 2023
Format Read: Audiobook
Review: I enjoyed this memoir very much. Minnie covers a lot of her life and her feelings and beliefs. Her childhood had the most interesting stories.
Recommended For: Minnie Driver fans.
Book-opoly #22
Review: I enjoyed this memoir very much. Minnie covers a lot of her life and her feelings and beliefs. Her childhood had the most interesting stories.
Recommended For: Minnie Driver fans.
Book-opoly #22
May 17, 2022
3.5 stars
Listened to the audiobook.
Didn’t much care for the interview at the end.
Listened to the audiobook.
Didn’t much care for the interview at the end.
August 7, 2022
Enjoyable but much too brief (she skips ahead 17 or so years after “Good Will Hunting” to the story of her unexpected pregnancy). A perfect book for audio - Minnie Driver has such an expressive, plummy voice, and she does all the different characters with their own accents and voices.
November 6, 2022
This. Was. Excellent! First of all, I could listen to Minnie Driver talk for days (which, I guess is exactly what I did, LOL). Her story is engaging and she has a great sense of humor. The tag line is "a memoir in essays" which accurately describes what she's done here. It's not so much her life story from start to finish, but a series of chronological essays capturing a certain time in her life. So good. Put it on your list now and while I'm sure it's still great to read in print, it's really going to be that much better if you listen to it. So even if you've never listened to a book, this is the one to try it out. (And of course Rob Lowe's Stories I Only Tell my Friends is the best ever to listen to but I'm sure I've told that to everyone I know by now).
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