A wry and wonderful memoir.... Jamie is in print a warm but unsparing eyewitness: peeking poignantly from the wings as her progenitor glories, sifting through the jumbo pillbox when he starts to fall apart.” — New York Times
“Famous Father Girl paints a winning picture of the Bernstein family, especially her parents, the much-celebrated Lenny and the much-loved Felicia, while offering a poignant take on the complexities of growing up as the child of a legend—or, for that matter, as anybody’s child.” — Adam Gopnik
“Bernstein’s jaw-dropping honesty and humor gives us the best example of the ‘growing up famous’ genre since Brooke Hayward’s classic Haywire. ” — John Guare
“Seduction might have been his greatest talent, one countered by his daughter’s aptitude for truth-telling. Her memoir portrays a man whose weaponized ego fits perfectly into American celebrity culture, but it’s also a story of how his daughter survived that ego to become her own woman, even as she remains intent on keeping her father’s legacy alive. By preserving his legacy, Jamie honors her father as both a great talent and a complex human being.” — Washington Post
“Jamie Bernstein’s book about her fabled father not only takes us closer to Leonard Bernstein than anything yet published but stands by itself as a beautifully written and unflinchingly courageous expression of love, exasperation, amazement and forgiveness.” — Tim Page, Professor of Journalism and Music at the University of Southern California
“Famous Father Girl is unique among classical-music memoirs for its physical intimacy, its humor and tenderness, its ambivalence toward an irrepressible family genius. . . . The existence of this well-written book, with its poignancy and its shuddery detail. . . is a mark of [Jamie Bernstein’s] sanity and survival. In telling [her father’s] story, she got to write her own.” — New Yorker
“An intimate look at the famous, and famously private, musician, whose 7 Emmys only begin to scratch the surface of his musical achievements.” — Vanity Fair
“Readers are taken behind the scenes into what most would consider a fantasy life. There were vacations, Beatles concerts, luxury apartments and dinner parties with famous guests. To many readers, Jamie Bernstein’s childhood will seem charmed. Alas, the family has its issues. Readers may find interesting the (largely) bygone era of extravagance, and and tales of a quirky, yet average American family who got to experience the extraordinary.” — Associated Press
“Yes, Famous Father Girl is a love letter. It is also honest.” — WOSU Radio
“Growing up in the presence of a super famous parent is no easy thing. Jamie Bernstein presents an undisguised and understanding picture of her father, family, and friends. She chronicles her emergence as a partisan of ideals in which they believed. The book is full of inside stories and personal perspectives on the inspiring, spontaneous, and often no-holds-barred challenges of Bernstein’s multiple worlds.” — Michael Tilson Thomas
“Making her literary debut, broadcaster and filmmaker Jamie Bernstein offers an intimate, gossipy, and candid memoir of growing up the eldest child of renowned conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990). . . . A cleareyed portrait of a spirited, and troubled, family.” — Kirkus
“[In Famous Father Girl ,] Bernstein paints a fascinating picture of the dizzying magic that Leonard Bernstein brought to his music—and the complexity to his home life.” — Publishers Weekly
Seduction might have been his greatest talent, one countered by his daughter’s aptitude for truth-telling. Her memoir portrays a man whose weaponized ego fits perfectly into American celebrity culture, but it’s also a story of how his daughter survived that ego to become her own woman, even as she remains intent on keeping her father’s legacy alive. By preserving his legacy, Jamie honors her father as both a great talent and a complex human being.
Bernstein’s jaw-dropping honesty and humor gives us the best example of the ‘growing up famous’ genre since Brooke Hayward’s classic Haywire.
Jamie Bernstein’s book about her fabled father not only takes us closer to Leonard Bernstein than anything yet published but stands by itself as a beautifully written and unflinchingly courageous expression of love, exasperation, amazement and forgiveness.
Seduction might have been his greatest talent, one countered by his daughter’s aptitude for truth-telling. Her memoir portrays a man whose weaponized ego fits perfectly into American celebrity culture, but it’s also a story of how his daughter survived that ego to become her own woman, even as she remains intent on keeping her father’s legacy alive. By preserving his legacy, Jamie honors her father as both a great talent and a complex human being.
…[a] wry and wonderful memoir…Having settled on oration and documentary filmmaking after an abortive musical career of her own, Jamie is in print a warm but unsparing eyewitness: peeking poignantly from the wings as her progenitor glories, sifting through the jumbo pillbox when he starts to fall apart.
The New York Times Book Review - Alexandra Jacobs
04/23/2018
Yes, Famous Father Girl is a love letter. It is also honest.
Famous Father Girl paints a winning picture of the Bernstein family, especially her parents, the much-celebrated Lenny and the much-loved Felicia, while offering a poignant take on the complexities of growing up as the child of a legend—or, for that matter, as anybody’s child.
An intimate look at the famous, and famously private, musician, whose 7 Emmys only begin to scratch the surface of his musical achievements.
Growing up in the presence of a super famous parent is no easy thing. Jamie Bernstein presents an undisguised and understanding picture of her father, family, and friends. She chronicles her emergence as a partisan of ideals in which they believed. The book is full of inside stories and personal perspectives on the inspiring, spontaneous, and often no-holds-barred challenges of Bernstein’s multiple worlds.
You think you had a complicated father? In this wry and clear-eyed, ardent and altogether terrific memoir, Jamie Bernstein lets us in on what it’s like to have a childhood as fraught as it was charmed. Plus, great gossip! (I’ve run out of friends to share the Michael Jackson anecdote with—so I’m going to meet more people.)
Readers are taken behind the scenes into what most would consider a fantasy life. There were vacations, Beatles concerts, luxury apartments and dinner parties with famous guests. To many readers, Jamie Bernstein’s childhood will seem charmed. Alas, the family has its issues. Readers may find interesting the (largely) bygone era of extravagance, and and tales of a quirky, yet average American family who got to experience the extraordinary.
Leonard Bernstein was a charisma bomb from the moment he first seized the podium of the New York Philharmonic in 1943, subsequently diffusing his radioactive talent through the theaters of Broadway, the concert halls of Europe, the state occasions of Kennedys, the walls of the Ivy League…..Jamie is in print a warm but unsparing eyewitness: peeking poignantly from the wings as her progenitor glories, sifting through the jumbo pillbox when he starts to fall apart. “The hardest feat in the world to pull off was to have a little one-on-one time with Daddy,” Jamie recalls with rue. How generous of her to share him with us yet again, this man who was not a rabbit-prey for a python after all, but a lion.
Famous Father Girl is unique among classical-music memoirs for its physical intimacy, its humor and tenderness, its ambivalence toward an irrepressible family genius.... the existence of this well-written book, with its poignancy and its shuddery detail... is a mark of [ author Jamie Bernstein’s] sanity and survival. In telling [her father’s] story, she got to write her own.
Making her literary debut, broadcaster and filmmaker Jamie Bernstein offers an intimate, gossipy, and candid memoir of growing up the eldest child of renowned conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990).... A cleareyed portrait of a spirited, and troubled, family.
2018-04-03
