A review by melissartemis
In Pieces by Sally Field

4.0

This was such an eye-opening look into the emotional life of an American Hollywood icon. I never knew too much about Sally FIeld's personal life, but I always adored her performances throughout the years, and whatever I probably assumed about what she was really like was way off. The way she opened up and showed us those raw pieces of herself is incredibly brave and I admire the courage it must have taken to go there. This memoir deals primarily with her relationships with her mother, step-father and absentee father, and how those interactions, or lack thereof, with them shaped who she was and the decisions she made. We learn a lot about her childhood, and get an inside look into how she came to be Gidget, The Flying Nun, and how her career was shaped after those defining roles. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars was because she seemed to take a pretty drastic leap in time, skipping through the 80's, 90's and early 00's, quite abruptly to be honest, and I remember wondering what had happened as I was listening to the audiobook. I was actually looking forward to hearing about her roles in some of the movies I most remember (Steel Magnolias, Forest Gump, Mrs. Doubtfire etc.), and while I understand that she probably wasn't going to discuss everything she was ever in, we also never find out where she was emotionally when her career really took off and that 30 year or so span afterwards. I really would have liked to see how she grew from the time she played Norma Rae to when she was up for the role of Mary Todd Lincoln, which is respectively where she leaves off and picks up again. Maybe that time wasn't relevant to the narrative she was going for, and I can understand how that's so, but because it seemed she was such a different woman in her early career I thought we'd get more about how it is that she became the Sally Field we see today. Other than that personal gripe of mine, I really enjoyed this book. I would also totally recommend listening to it in audiobook form because we get to hear her words in Sally Field's own voice, which adds another level of intimacy to her story.