Childhood sadness as a Driver
Minnie Driver Manilla Press, £20
Though Minnie Driver is an Oscar-nominated actress, don’t pick up her memoir expecting movie industry gossip.
Her first book is more interesting, thoughtful and emotionally revealing than your typical celebrity memoir, as the Good Will Hunting and Circle Of Friends actress shares 10 formative life stories told with heart and self-deprecating humour.
The book opens with a chapter about her unsettled childhood.
At loggerheads with her new stepfather, Minnie was sent to boarding school aged eight. Angry, homesick and rebellious, she often ran away – and when she was driven back to school, she would roll down the car window at traffic lights and scream at strangers, “HELP ME!
I AM BEING ABDUCTED!”
The anger and resentment is still evident three years later. She argues with her father while staying in his Bahamas home so, shockingly, he packs the
11-year-old child off on the next plane back to the UK, which involves a solitary stopover in a Miami hotel. Minnie punishes him by buying up half the hotel shop on his credit card. Her more comical stories cover terrible auditions, illegal raves, and wayward hair. But for much of her life, Minnie is chasing something elusive – love, success, meaning.
She finds stability in parenthood after an unexpected pregnancy from a short relationship (marvelling at her expansion during pregnancy, one night, she weighs her breasts on the Whole Foods vegetable scales).
She also tells a touching story about falling in love. She enlisted “a kind of modern-day Indiana Jones [who] made documentaries in places of conflict” – though unnamed, this is likely to be her current partner, Addison O’Dea – to help her deliver aid to the people of fire-ravaged Malibu, where she has a home.
Access from the sea was banned to stop looters, so the pair had to run the gauntlet of the coastguard patrol to deliver supplies. Afterwards, they are forced to wait in Minnie’s home until the coastguard’s shift ends, and it’s movingly clear that a powerful spark is igniting.
Though the book ends on a heartbreaking note with the death of her mother from cancer, this chapter is as much about life and human connection as loss.
Offering insights without oversharing, these are thoughtful snapshots of an unusual life.