I love to read and I read a lot. But, I enjoy hearing Candice Bergen’s voice more than I enjoy the solitude of reading. For this autobiography, I’m buying the audio book. Here’s a sample from Simon & Schuster.
The internet abounds with reviews of A Fine Romance, most are positive, this is the beginning of Joanne Kaufman’s review—one of my favorites—for The Wall Street Journal:
Celebrities who sign on to write memoirs are often willing—even eager—to confess to indiscriminate coupling. Name names? Just try to stop them. They’ll also cheerfully admit to poor taste, questionable judgment, rotten marriages and worse movies. Confession is good for the soul and even better for the best-seller list.
But anyone can cop to being bad. Candice Bergen is far more daring in her smart, self-mocking memoir “A Fine Romance.” She admits to being flatulent, cranky and fat. Unrepentantly on all counts.
“I feel a skewed sense of moral superiority to the women who are self-disciplined,” she writes. “At a recent dinner party I shared bread and olive oil followed by chocolate ice cream with my husband. A woman near me looked at me, appalled, and I thought, ‘I don’t care.’ ”
Trust her: She does not care.
“A Fine Romance” is a follow-up to “Knock Wood” (1984), Ms. Bergen’s account of growing up gorgeous and privileged in Hollywood, the daughter of radio ventriloquist (go figure) Edgar Bergen and the “sister” of Edgar’s anything-but-silent partner, Charlie McCarthy. Her new memoir describes her life as wife, mother and star of “Murphy Brown” after years of mediocre roles and, sometimes, scathing reviews.
The book’s title understates things a bit. “A Fine Romance” is really the story of three romances. There is Ms. Bergen’s 15-year marriage to the director Louis Malle, a complicated but often idyllic union that ended with his death in 1995; her later happy, if challenging, marriage to real-estate developer Marshall Rose; and her deep relationship with her only child, Chloe Malle.
You’ll find the balance of Kaufman’s review here.