Managing
Expectations, by Minnie Driver. Non-fiction.
From the time she reluctantly became an 8 year-old
boarder at a school she loved going to as a day-student, actress and writer
Minnie Driver has questioned situations that she thought unfair, loudly and vociferously at times as she did
when not wanting to return to stay at school, demanding other drivers trapped
at the same traffic lights to ‘Call the Police – She was Being Abducted!’ while
her mother stoically eyed the road ahead.
As all witnesses were British,
stiff upper lips were shown and an air of faint embarrassment persisted until
the lights changed, freeing everyone to heave sighs of relief.
Minnie has blessed us with a book of reminiscences, a
‘memoirish’ book, as she says - well, it’s quite the most charming Memoirish
book I have read for some considerable time, and I can’t help wishing that
Other People’s Memoirs were even half as entertaining: book sales would go through the roof!
Minnie questions everything, especially everything she
considers unfair, and when she was a child, there were many situations that
earned her attention, especially when
her father had Minnie and her sister for the summer holidays in Barbados. His new girlfriend was there too, and Minnie
disapproved loudly of her micro-bikinis, asked her how long she was staying,
then asked her if she was twenty or thirty years younger than Minnie’s
dad. Ah, the sweet satisfaction of girlfriend
tears! Until her father demanded an
apology, which 11 year-old Minnie refused to give, and was staggered to be
evicted from the holiday home and sent back to England. By herself.
And thereby hangs a tale, of revenge, chastenment, and
character-building – but of whom?
Due to unavailability of flights, Minnie was stranded for
a day at a plush Miami hotel – with her father’s credit card details to
hand: she wrought her revenge in the
Gift Shop by starting out with one travel bag and had to purchase another
two. She doesn’t record her father’s
reaction to her excesses, but her sister was thrilled to get some duty-free
‘Charlie’ by Revlon, something her father would never have allowed because he
said ‘it smells like a tart’s window-box’.
Which all proves that Minnie is a force of nature, and does indeed make
her mark upon the world – as she should.
And just in case readers are persuaded that Minnie Driver is 100%
unconquerable and never has a bad day, there is much poignant proof to the contrary: life, as we all know, is unknowable. In her words:
‘the story doesn’t necessarily begin or end where it should: happy endings are overrated, and happy
endings are almost never the end.’ This
book is funny and wise and true.
Everyone should read it. SIX STARS.
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