Managing Expectations: A Memoir in Essays

by Minnie Driver

Overview

A MARIE CLAIRE BEST MEMOIR OF THE YEAR • A USA TODAY MUST READ BOOK • A W MAGAZINE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK • A SHEREADS BEST MEMOIR OF THE SUMMER

A charming, poignant, and mesmerizing memoir in essays from beloved actor and natural-born storyteller Minnie Driver, chronicling the way life works out even when it doesn’t.

In this intimate, beautifully crafted collection, Driver writes with disarming charm and candor about her bohemian upbringing between England and Barbados; her post-university travails and triumphs—from being the only student in her acting school not taken on by an agent to being discovered at a rave in a muddy field in the English countryside; shooting to fame in one of the most influential films of the 1990s and being nominated for an Academy Award; and finding the true light of her life, her son. She chronicles her unconventional career path, including the time she gave up on acting to sell jeans in Uruguay, her journey as a single parent, and the heartbreaking loss of her mother. 

Like Lena Dunham in Not That Kind of Girl, Gabrielle Union in We’re Going to Need More Wine and Patti Smith in Just Kids, Driver writes with razor-sharp humor and grace as she explores navigating the depths of failure, fighting for success, discovering the unmatched wonder and challenge of motherhood, and wading through immeasurable grief. Effortlessly charming, deeply funny, personal, and honest, Managing Expectations reminds us of the way life works out—even when it doesn’t.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063115309
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	05/03/2022
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	50,578
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Minnie Driver is an English and American actress, singer, and songwriter whose films include Circle of Friends, GoldenEye, Big Night, Grosse Pointe Blank, Sleepers, Ella Enchanted, The Phantom of the Opera, and most recently, the Amazon Original film Cinderella. For her role as Skylar in Gus Van Sant's Good Will Hunting, she was nominated for both the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has also starred in several television series, including The Riches, for which she received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations, Speechless, Will and Grace, and Amazon’s Modern Love. She has also recorded three albums, Everything I’ve Got in My Pocket , Seastories, and Ask Me To Dance all of which received considerable critical acclaim. She lives in Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

1 Surprise 1

2 I'm Going to Miami 43

3 Butterfly Hair 83

4 Other People's Drugs 97

5 Settling Dust and the Sound of Crickets 129

6 A Weekend Away 159

7 You're It 177

8 Here, There, and Everywhere 211

9 Sea-Based Incursion 237

10 Daffodils 271

Acknowledgments 307

Editorial Reviews

03/28/2022

Actor Driver parlays her ebullient charm from the screen to the page in this sparkling debut, a series of amusing essays on Hollywood, motherhood, and the vicissitudes of life. Taking readers from her fraught English childhood in the 1970s to the glittering career that followed her breakout role in 1995’s Circle of Friends, Driver muses on everything from her famous curls (“like giant springs pogoing in perpetual motion”) in “Butterfly Hair” to the unglamorous trials of being a working actress (when “all the momentum gathered in making Circle of Friends seemed to have disappeared,” she writes, “I couldn’t even book a fake orgasm”) and surviving 2018’s devastating wildfires in Malibu with her husband and son, in the introspective “Sea-Based Incursion.” Throughout, Driver’s beguiling wit and candor steal the show, even as she contends with the more difficult subjects later in life, such as the grief of losing her mother to cancer. Movingly recalling their final days and conversations together—including one about bread, which they concluded was “really just a butter vessel”—Driver observes, “We are on an adventure, and this is not some eleventh-hour reach to spin death into a more palatable destination.” Humorous and heartfelt, this is sure to please fans. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"We have all been charmed by Minnie Driver on the screen, but it’s a divine pleasure to learn the woman behind some of our most beloved characters is a writer of true precision, wit and style who has had a life more compelling than any movie. This book will be a companion to those struggling to make sense of their own story and a clarion call to mothers (of all kinds) grappling with their identity. I was comforted, galvanized, touched and - no surprise considering the author - charmed, too.

Lena Dunham

[Managing Expectations] reflects an actor’s close attention to strange, exasperating, heartbreaking behavior all around her, conveyed with wit and poise.

USA Today

To reveal oneself in a manner that is at once poignant and fiercely intelligent while also being funny, warm, and genuine, is quite a feat. Minnie Driver shows us she is even more than what’s met the eye all these years. Simply put: I love this book!

Therese Ann Fowler

★ 2022-02-15
The veteran actor delivers a memoir in a series of deftly crafted essays.

In her debut, Driver engagingly writes about family dramas, self-doubt, her unruly hair, unexpected motherhood, and the trajectory of her career. She grew up partly in England, with her mother, sister, brother, and the man her mother had recently married; and partly in Barbados, where her father lived. “None of it makes any sense,” she writes about her childhood. “There is no conversation about all this change. New people wander into our landscape and nobody but me thinks it’s weird.” Fed up with Driver’s rudeness toward his girlfriend, her father sent her back to England, which required an overnight stay, alone, at Miami’s Fontainebleau Hotel. Reflecting on her feelings then, she writes, “I always want grown-ups to like me, but find it difficult to behave in a way that seems to consistently please them.” After graduating from acting school, she was despondent about being the only one in her class without an agent. “The place I found myself stuck, at twenty,” she writes, “was being a new adult—still furnished with a child’s dream plan, but being asked to manifest it in a world of adult expectations.” After appearing in the lead role in the 1995 film Circle of Friends, for which she was paid $10,000, Driver expected other offers to roll in. But these were so slow in coming that she took off to Uruguay, where her sister was living with a boyfriend. For the author, beach life seemed a possible future—until she was summoned to New York for an audition. Walking anonymously through the streets of Manhattan, she suddenly felt liberated. “I can consciously decide who I am and not let circumstance or previous damage dictate it,” she gushed to her sister. “I can be the conscious architect of my own life!” Driver’s spirited prose informs all the essays; a standout is her graceful, moving chronicle, radiant with love, of her mother’s last days.

Sharp observations and quirky irreverence make for a delightful read.

Kirkus Reviews

"We have all been charmed by Minnie Driver on the screen, but it’s a divine pleasure to learn the woman behind some of our most beloved characters is a writer of true precision, wit and style who has had a life more compelling than any movie. This book will be a companion to those struggling to make sense of their own story and a clarion call to mothers (of all kinds) grappling with their identity. I was comforted, galvanized, touched and - no surprise considering the author - charmed, too. — Lena Dunham

"Sharp observations and quirky irreverence make for a delightful read." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“To reveal oneself in a manner that is at once poignant and fiercely intelligent while also being funny, warm, and genuine, is quite a feat. Minnie Driver shows us she is even more than what’s met the eye all these years. Simply put: I love this book!” — Therese Ann Fowler, author of A Good Neighborhood and  Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

“Actor Driver parlays her ebullient charm from the screen to the page in this sparkling debut, a series of amusing essays on Hollywood, motherhood, and the vicissitudes of life… Humorous and heartfelt, this is sure to please fans.” — Publishers Weekly

"Completely captivating.” — Lily King, award-winning and bestselling author of Writers & Lovers and Euphoria

“[Managing Expectations] reflects an actor’s close attention to strange, exasperating, heartbreaking behavior all around her, conveyed with wit and poise.” — USA Today

From the Publisher

"Completely captivating.

Lily King