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player ready...If anyone has a right to be jaded, it’s Drew Barrymore.
The actress/producer/cosmetic company owner has been working since she was 11 months old. She was world-famous by age 7, institutionalized by age 13, an emancipated minor by age 14 and a washed-up, former child actress by age 17.
And yet, that’s not the angle Barrymore goes for in “Wildflower,” out Tuesday.
Determined optimism
Barrymore’s determined optimism shines through this collection of stories. Just look at the cover. This isn’t a book that’s going to take a woe-is-me approach. If anything, she could be accused of glossing over the troubled times, not willing to tap into the dark corners of her past. (For example, her stint in rehab when she was barely a teenager is only addressed briefly and not even directly.)
And yet, “Wildflower” is not annoyingly sunny either. Or annoyingly goofy. Or full of patronizing “if I can do it, anyone can” platitudes. The average person probably can’t relate to any of the wacky things that happened in Barrymore’s life, but she describes things in such a matter-of-fact, down-to-earth way that it’s easy to draw parallels between her life and our less dramatic ones. Not many of us know how it is to be 14 years old and living completely alone in your own apartment, but most of us remember that first time we had to do laundry or buy groceries when we went away to college. Not the same, but there’s some common ground there.
Scattered plot
Barrymore resists the term “memoir,” and rightfully so. Each of the 28 chapters of “Wildflower” is a self-contained vignette with no overarching narrative linking them all together other than, you know, Barrymore herself. The chapters are not in chronological order or organized by any sort of theme, which fits her all-over-the-place, free-spirit storytelling. Some read like random stories you tell at a party; others are more eloquent and structured. As a reader, it takes a few chapters to get used to her style: an overuse of exclamation points and paragraphs that never go where you think they’re headed, which isn’t always a bad thing. This is no over-edited, ghost-written piece—which is a good thing.
Straight to the heart
By the end of the book, I was having Feelings (yes, with a capital F). The two chapters that hit the emotional button hardest were, strangely, “Flossy,” about her dog, and “Dearest Frankie,” addressed directly to her younger daughter. Strange because I have never had a dog and am not remotely close to even thinking about having children. Yet the way she wrote about both subjects struck a chord.
A more standard memoir with a clear-cut beginning, middle and end would have diluted the emotion and packed less of a punch. “Wildflower” feels written straight from the heart, exclamation points and all.
Wildflower
by Drew Barrymore
3 stars
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