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Title: Leaving a Doll's House: A Memoir
ISBN: 0316093831
Author:
Claire Bloom
Publicate Date: 1998-04-01
Publish: 1998-04-01
List Price: $17.99
Average Customer Rating: 3.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $12.99
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $1.95
Amazon Merchant Price: $16.19
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Mixed Feelings . . .
Claire has had a fascinating life. Her first love affair was with Richard Burton, followed by others with Laurence Olivier and Yul Brenner. She was a successful screen actress (as in Limelight with Charlie Chaplin), but she was better known for her stage acting. So she has a great story to tell. But something about this book was a little "off" for me, and I can't quite put my finger on it. She was English, and I am a great Anglophile and so I normally love the tone and nuances of anything British. But she came across as perhaps a little bit affected. And then she describes her three husbands--she never really loved Rod Steiger (but married him because she was pregnant), her second husband Elkins (whom she mentions only briefly and usually just by last name), and then she excoriates her longest mate and last husband, Philip Roth, detailing the demise of their partnership. She claims to have "moved on" with her life since him, but there is an unmistakable taste of bitterness to her recall. She further described a rather symbiotic relationship with her daughter, Anna Steiger, who became an opera singer. Claire is to be commended for her tremendous honesty in this book, and I have no doubt that she was a brilliant actress. Her surprise ending makes for good reading, although I had "not quite boarded her bus," as they say.
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2: Claire Bloom can write!
I just was reading the most recent of Philip Roth's books, which I adore. I have read everything he's written more than once. Then I decided to open "Leaving a Doll's House" again.
I was taken with how honest is Bloom, and how what others take to be personal vitriol really isn't. It was more fun reading Bloom after Roth. She's not a genius and she gives him plenty of credit for being one, but she is smart and has a great warmth... and is not just dishing about Philip but is telling how it was for her. Is there a woman alive, over 30, who would not totally relate to her hurt? Well done, Ms. Bloom.
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3: Make her Dame Claire Bloom Please!
I think the British honor of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire has missed wonderful Claire Bloom. In this book, she reveals all to her audience including her difficult and turbulent relationship with equally brilliant and disturbed Philip Roth. Their union should have been a happy one but it wasn't after so many years together. Sadly, their relationship ended in divorce. I remember watching this glorious actress on As The World Turns as Lily's mother-in-law, Orlena. As Claire gets older, she gets better on stage, film or television. I would love to see her become a Dame because she is in every sense of the world. While she writes about her life, she writes about her relationships especially with Philip Roth and understands him better than literary critic could because she was so close to him. As somebody who has read many of his works, Roth is both a literary genius and equally troubled as a person. He wrote that he didn't need to be surrounded by people but Claire needs constant human contact. Somehow, these two brilliant artists didn't make it. It's not a happy divorce but then what is. I think Claire for the first time needed to be independent and free from a relationship with a man like Philip Roth. Prior to Roth, she was married to Rod Steiger and Hillard Elkins. I think Claire like Nora in Henrik Ibsen's Doll's House needs to leave for her own sanity and become independent and free of others. I hope Claire has happiness in her life. Still, I believe she deserves to be a British Dame.
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4: A book I was ashamed to read
I started this book, and when I start a book I usually feel obliged to finish it. But quite early along I understood that this is a book I should be ashamed of reading. Here I will admit to my own not so wonderful curiosity. I wanted to know about the relationship between Bloom and Philip Roth.
What I got was not the story of some great love affair which tragically ended in a parting of ways. Instead I got a petty, vicious, mean- spirited attack on Roth who is also made to seem petty, vicious and mean- spirited. As is often the case with Divorce both sides come out looking awful.
I also in truth did not like the image of herself which Bloom presented throughout the work. I am sorry to say but she seemed quite petty and selfish throughout. This was a great disappointment in part because I had always found her to be so remarkably beautiful. Well as the old saying goes , the beauty outside does not necessarily correspond with what is within.
In any case I definitely would not recommend this book.
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5: Even Swans Suffer
Claire Bloom put her heart into this book, writing the truth about her life with the same sensitivity and refinement she brought to so many of her stage and film roles. Of course, critics hated it -- especially female critics. And you know why? Because there's nothing ugly ducklings hate worse than the idea that even swans suffer. For nasty old yentas like Daphne Merkin, it's bad enough that Claire Bloom is the most perfect, lovely English rose who ever lived. They hate her for that no matter what she happens to be like as a human being. But the fact that she can feel, and think, and love, and write -- intolerable!
This book reveals all the horror of Philip Roth's failures as a writer and a human being. The fact that his self-loathing is so often disguised as megalomania and artistic temperament is no excuse for the unbelievable suffering he caused to those around him. Reading this book makes it much easier to understand the fundamental ugliness of his later works. Plainly, Roth needs to believe that the whole world hates him as much as he hates himself. Reading the story, one senses that if anything Claire Bloom has been too kind, making excuses for a man who obviously has no pride and no shame, no sense of resonsibility and not a shred of common decency. Not even Trick E. Dixon or Big John Baal or Gil Gamesh himself could have behaved this atrociously!
At the same time, Claire Bloom herself emerges from these pages as a very fragile soul who never really recovered from a painful childhood. It's impossible not to wish she had been a little stronger -- or that the men in her life had been more worthy of her. Gore Vidal, Yul Brynner, Richard Burton, all legendary figures in one way or another, yet none of them had the special decency or the courage to recognize the heavenly, radiant, ethereal beauty that was Claire Bloom.
There will never be another like her.
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