Managing Expectations: vital, heartfelt and surprising tales from life Graham Norton

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Description

A dazzling 'tell-most' memoir: poignant and laugh-out-loud funny scenes from the life of actor Minnie Driver.

Managing Expectations is a collection of delicately crafted, hilarious and heartfelt essays, described as a 'tell-most', in which Minnie Driver uses her formidable storytelling skills to examine and understand her less-than-ordinary life. Suffused with warmth and humour, Minnie shares poignant, candid and honest stories of her unconventional childhood, the shock of fame, motherhood, love, success, failure, the power of sisterly love, and the loss of her beloved mother.

In her own words, it's about how things not working out actually worked out in the end, and how reaching for the dream is easily more interesting, expansive, sad and funny than the dream itself coming true.

'When I was six, I wrote my first short essay, about how when I grew up, I wanted to be a farmer's daughter.
My dad worked in insurance. Now, though, I realise how apt that ambition was. It set up a template in my life of wanting something impossible to become true. How in trying to make something impossible happen, and failing repeatedly, other things happened. Things that became my life. A life I love, because it was made with so many holes that I enjoy filling in.'

Reviews

Vital, heartfelt and surprising, these tales from a life are told with humour, style and intelligence. * Graham Norton *
A beautiful book: funny, honest, revealing, heartfelt and moving * Adam Kay *
A wonderful memoir by a glorious writer: funny, poignant, profound. I gobbled it up in one joyous sitting. * Elizabeth Day *
An absolute jewel of a book. Gloriously readable, hilarious, painful, acute, sharply recalled and vividly brought to life * Stephen Fry *
'A writer of true precision, wit and style... I was comforted, galvanized, touched' * Lena Dunham *

Author Bio

Minnie Driver is best known for her breakout role in Circle of Friends and the 1997 film Good Will Hunting (which reaped nominations for both the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and a Screen Actors Guild Award). She has appeared in numerous TV programmes, including The Riches, starring opposite Eddie Izzard, for which she was nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe. She is also a singer, with three studio albums. Driver will next be seen in Searchlight Pictures' biopic Chevalier and 20th Century's Rosaline. She most recently appeared in the latest adaptation of Cinderella on Amazon, in Modern Love, and has appeared as a recurring character in Will and Grace, which was recently rebooted, and in Speechless. She is also the host of the podcast Minnie Questions with Minnie Driver.