In this literary memoir, an American icon tells her story for the first time, about a challenging and lonely childhood, the craft that helped her find her voice, and a emotional legacy that shaped her journey as a daughter and a mother.
If you come to her memoir, In Pieces, expecting to meet a plucky Sally Field desperate to be liked, you will not find her. Written by the actor over seven years, without the aid of a ghostwriter (a crutch often used by celebrity authors), this somber, intimate and at times wrenching self-portrait feels like an act of personal investigation — the private act of a woman, now 71, seeking to understand how she became herself, and striving to cement together the shards of her psyche that have been chipped and shattered over the course of her life ... Throughout In Pieces, she assesses herself with a clear and critical eye, often revealing unappealing parts of herself — including her temper, her insecurity, her absences from her sons’ lives while she pursued her work, her role in her two failed marriages and her flares of impatience with her mother, who dedicated the last years of her life to helping take care of Field’s sons — with minimal rationalization, sentiment or self-pity. It may not make you like her, but by the end, what we think about her also seems quite beside the point.
When I read Sally Field’s memoir, In Pieces, the first time, I didn’t move from my sofa for three hours. After I finished, I picked up my phone, which was pinging with texts from fellow Parnassus staffers asking, How’s the book? What did you think? It took me a minute to figure out how to respond. Then I texted back one word, in all caps: SURPRISING ... Field’s memoir shines brightest and stuns most when she writes about family. Revealing disturbing events from her childhood and how they impacted her life, she opens up a recurring theme of damage and healing ... Reading In Pieces feels like having a glass of wine with a wise, kind, funny friend who isn’t afraid to get real with you about the hard stuff.
Field’s memoir takes readers through almost seven decades but ends as it begins, with her mother. As Baa became ill, Field was cast as Mary Todd Lincoln, filming 'Lincoln' with Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis ... Field the writer purposely adheres to her story, which she says is about her relationship with her mother and her development as an actress.
