Synopses & Reviews
In the follow-up to
Knock Wood—her bestselling “engaging, intelligent, and wittily self-deprecating autobiography” (
The New York Times)—Candice Bergen shares the big events: her marriage to a famous French director, the birth of her daughter,
Murphy Brown, widowhood, falling in love again, and watching her daughter blossom.
A Fine Romance begins with Bergen’s charming first husband, French director Louis Malle, whose huge appetite for life broadened her horizons and whose occasional darkness never diminished their love for each other. But her real romance begins when she discovers overpowering love for her daughter after years of ambivalence about motherhood. As Chloe grows up, Bergen finds her comic genius in the biggest TV role of the 80s, Murphy Brown, and makes unwanted headlines when Dan Quayle pulls her into the 1992 presidential campaign.
Fifteen years into their marriage, Malle is diagnosed with cancer, and Candice is unflinching in describing her and Chloe’s despair over his death. But after years of widowhood, she feels the sweet shock of finding a different kind of soulmate. Candice takes us through the first years of her new marriage and shares the bittersweetness of watching Chloe leave home and flourish—and the comedy of a losing battle against those damn wrinkles and extra pounds.
A natural writer, Candice is hilarious, brutally honest, down-to-earth, and wise. She may be a beautiful Hollywood actress with a charmed life, but Candice is someone who can talk frankly about extraordinary events. Listeners will feel like they’ve just made a best friend.
Synopsis
In this
New York Times bestseller, acclaimed actress Candice Bergen "shows how to do a memoir right...The self-possessed, witty, and down-to-earth voice that made Bergen's first memoir a hit when it was published in 1984 has only been deepened by life's surprises" (
The New York Times Book Review).
"Candice Bergen is unflinchingly honest" (The Washington Post), and in A Fine Romance she describes her first marriage at age thirty-four to famous French director Louis Malle; her overpowering love for her daughter, Chloe; the unleashing of her inner comic with Murphy Brown; her trauma over Malle's death; her joy at finding new love; and her pride at watching Chloe blossom.
In her decidedly nontraditional marriage to the insatiably curious Louis, Bergen takes readers on world travels to the sets where each made films. Pregnant with Chloe at age thirty-nine, this mature primigravida also recounts a journey through motherhood that includes plundering the Warner Bros. costume closets for Halloween getups and never leaving her ever-expanding menagerie out of the fun. She offers priceless, behind-the-scenes looks at Murphy Brown, from caterwauling with Aretha Franklin to the surreal experience of becoming headline news when Dan Quayle took exception to her character becoming a single mother. Bergen tackles familiar rites of passage with moving honesty: the rigors of caring for a spouse in his final illness, getting older, and falling in love again after she was tricked into a blind date.
By the time the last page is turned, "we're all likely to be wishing Bergen herself--funny, insightful, self-deprecating, flawed (and not especially concerned about that), and slugging her way through her older years with bemused determination--was living next door" (USA TODAY).
About the Author
Candice Bergen’s film credits include The Sand Pebbles, Carnal Knowledge, Starting Over (for which she received an Oscar nomination), and Miss Congeniality. On television, she made headlines as the tough-talking broadcast journalist and star of Murphy Brown, for which she won five Emmys and two Golden Globes. She later starred with James Spader and William Shatner in the critically acclaimed series Boston Legal.Candice Bergen’s film credits include The Sand Pebbles, Carnal Knowledge, Starting Over (for which she received an Oscar nomination), and Miss Congeniality. On television, she made headlines as the tough-talking broadcast journalist and star of Murphy Brown, for which she won five Emmys and two Golden Globes. She later starred with James Spader and William Shatner in the critically acclaimed series Boston Legal.