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Summary: Farrow "Falls Away"
Review: "What Falls Away" was apparently any sense of innocence that Mia Farrow had when she broke up with Woody Allen. Farrow's autobiography has a sort of wispy appeal, with her stories about life with Frank Sinatra and Andre Previn, but it only comes to life in the last third of the book. Farrow came from a celebrity family and started acting early. It was the cause of her deteriorated brief marriage to legendary singer Frank Sinatra, and new homebody ways didn't save her second marriage to Andre Previn -- but she did adopt many special-needs or orphaned children, alongside her own biological ones. But her sprawling adopted family was imperiled when her longtime boyfriend Woody Allen was found to be having an affair with her adopted daughter. The first two-thirds of "What Falls Away" lacks any real punch. It's low-sugar cotton candy, with Farrow talking about the celebrity life and her time with her two husbands. And she talks about adopting children, of course -- although as the number goes up, it gets harder and harder to tell them apart. But Farrow's biography starts showing a pulse a third of the way. Her long-term affair with Woody Allen was a bit of a freakshow, and it's only when it comes to Allen that Farrow starts to show any passion of any kind -- good, bad, or just passionate. She tries to hold back her obvious -- and justifiable -- anger, but it seeps through the ink. Unfortunately, as "What Falls Away" starts to show signs of life, Farrow's own portrait of herself unravels. It comes across as alarming that she was merely worried by Allen's bizarre behavior toward Dylan, a young girl he sexually abused. And that after finding explicitly pornographic photographs of her adopted daughter, Farrow went back to work with Allen. Yet Farrow seems helpless to stop Allen from doing anything. She couldn't even throw him out of her apartment -- her son had to do it. Farrow's writing is wisp-thin and sort of vaguely new-agey, especially when she writes about her transcendental trips with the Beatles back in the sixties. It's not that good, but it's pleasant enough. Virtually everyone is painted in rosy hues, save Allen (who is painted a sort of slimy sludge color) and Soon-Yi (Farrow obviously doesn't know what her daughter is thinking). In fact, it's hard to tell what Farrow herself is thinking -- she only seems to skim the top of her feelings. Mia Farrow doesn't exactly bare her soul in "What Falls Away." What she does do is expose Woody Allen, and a life that mixes the disquieting and the impressive.
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Summary: Not your typical working mother
Review: After reading "What Falls Away", a fascinating autobiography, I have the deepest respect for Ms. Farrow. She convinces me of her sincerity and integrity. Myself a mother of two who works outside the home, I grant Ms. Farrow the status of femme extraordinaire to have raised 14 chidren, some of them disabled, while succeeding as a stage and screen actress. I was disappointed that she conscientiously omitted any description of her sex life with Sinatra, Previn, and Allen. The saga of her fallout with Woody Allen literally gave me nightmares. The memoir's Appendix, which contains the final NY State Supreme Court ruling of Allen's child custody case against Farrow, is a triumph of the judicial system.
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Summary: YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO PUT IT DOWN!!!
Review: Amazingly written book. Star-studded pages. Two photo sections, which help the stories come to life. Mia writes about her famous parents, her suffering through polio as a child, her 13 (mostly adopted) children, her marriages to Andre Previn and Frank Sinatra, her friendship with Salvador Dali, relationship and problems with Woody Allen, you name it!!! I have such a stronger respect for this woman after reading her autobiography. It has inspired me emotionally, artistically, as well as inspired me to seek a child through foreign adoption! :)
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Summary: Psychology, Theology, and Literture...what life is made of.
Review: Farrow writes intimately, innocently, and with the gentleness her demeanor must possess in person. I feel like I am 13 years old again, not the 31 year old woman I am. . .and I have just stolen a glimpse of someones diary whom I love very much. A diary which contains things that at first delightfully intrige me, and then, without too much warning (though there is some...) horrify and sadden me - cause me to recoil with my sweaty little hands gripping the pages, wishing I had never opened this very private book. Farrow has laid bare her soul in this book, just as sure as Woody Allen laid out those porno-graphic pictures of Soon-Yi for Farrow to see. How can I write an objective review of literature without commenting on the content? The content being her life. My God, all I want to say is: Please let there be a sequal, one in which Farrow will acknowledge her failure to understand, protect and DEFEND Soon-Yi from the pathetic child-molestor and human being, Woody Allen. But how can she protect someone else when she has never been able to protect herself? Soon-Yi was (and most likely remains) a helpless victim, yet Farrow never acknowledges this. She speaks tenderly of Soon-yi only in the ego-centric way of "daughter", which still leaves Farrow the center and victim instead of Soon-Yi. The way she ruminated about Allen's "inappropriate" behavior toward Dylan for many pages revealed a shattered heart and conscious still struggling to make sense. It seems Farrow's attempt in writing this book was to retrace her steps -- find out what happened to lead her to the monster she embraced for too long. At the conclusion her effort to summerize her life in two paragraphs was so pitiful it literally hurt my gutt (page 332). I write this on Good Friday and pray that she can once again find the God of her childhood, the One that, admittedly, helped her in the polio ward and comforted her when her parents failed to. Somewhere she misplaced Him in Allen's commercially sanitized yet utterly rotten and decomposing life. Jesus the Savior is still there for her, yet where and when she lost sight of Him she also lost sight of herself, her needs, her mind and her soul. How appropriate that she would adopt a blind little girl at the time the truth about her life was being revealed. Perhaps in the deceptively ethereal world of drugs (Pot from India, Prozac from N.Y.) Farrow was numbed into believeing she didn't need Jesus Christ or even know Him. Thank God this is a autobiography and not a biography of a life that has passed. I hope she does not try to escape into the lives of any more children and will instead, let Abba touch and heal the broken child that lives within her
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Summary: A Pleasant surprise!
Review: From the first moment that I opened this poetically written novel, I becamed enthralled with Ms. Farrow.
She is to be commended for a well written and enchating novel. Having read several dozen celebrity biographys before, I expected this one to be pretty much the same. But, what I got was drawn into the life of a very well rounded and intelligent woman. Mia Farrow should be given hero status. In these days of crumbling family values, and absentee parents, she has managed to raise 14 decent human beings, with little help from anyone.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who needs to be insprired. Mia has risen up and met the horror that Woody Allen brought to her life head on, and is a survivor.
Warning: After reading this book, you will never be able to watch a Woody Allen movie again without feeling nauseated.
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Summary: ... A Rose By Any Other Name...
Review: I am a lover of memoirs, and this is the best one I've read in a long time. Mia's candor is praiseworthy, and I found this to be a very important book with meaningful themes. Mia is a tender woman with a tender heart, and I can't find it within myself to be overly critical of her or of her naivete with regard to relationships with men. I think she knows what her emotional abandon caused her, and caused her children. Still, she is an amazing woman with a generous heart. Others may be critical of her "obsession" with children, but I thank God for people like Mia who dare to love the "unloveable" children of the world --- children who have been tossed away without a care or a thought. The story of Mia's marriage to Frank Sinatra, Andre Previn, and her long-term relationship with Woody Allen comprises most of the book. Through these relationships, she comes to terms with her own vulnerability, neediness and deep desire for intimacy. I don't think she's very different from a lot of women; different, perhaps, in how she chooses to go about attaining meaning in relationships. And certainly she is more passive than many women would have been in certain circumstances. At points during the book, I found myself angry with her for not just up and walking out, calling the police, getting a restraining order --- SOMETHING!! Instead, the lines I read were something to the effect of, "he wouldn't leave. I kept asking him, but he wouldn't leave, so I just let it go." Even after she was suspicious of Woody's (possible sexual) behavior toward their adopted daughter, Dylan, she was actually OVERJOYED when Woody encouraged her to adopt another girl, seen only in the photos of a boy she was trying to adopt!! I couldn't believe it...I thought she'd really flipped at that point. But throughout the book, I am reminded just how human Ms. Farrow is, and I am reminded of the humanity in us all --- the stupidity we knowingly walk in because it temporarily satisfies something in us, the deep desire for intimacy and love we itch and crave and long for, the desire to hope for good, hope for absolute good in people. We have all fallen in similar ways, I'm sure, perhaps, though, with different consequenses. Unfortunately, Ms. Farrow's children had to pay the ultimate price for her lack of sound judgement. Unlike other memoirs I've read, she does, however, take responsibility for her wrong doing, and I appreciated that. She and her children have suffered greatly, have experienced a terrible loss, from which they may never fully recover. I do wonder about Soon-yi, though. If she was young and naive when Woody first persuaded her, why did she continue? Did she not appreciate the devastation and pain her relationship with Woody caused her mother and all of her brothers and sisters? Perhaps these questions and others may never be answered -- not for the reader, and possibly not for Ms. Farrow and her family. Still, the book is more than worth the time. An excellent read.
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Summary: A divine accomplishment.
Review: I devoured this book,and I was not that big of a Mia Farrow fan until recently,to tell the truth.I always kind of felt sorry for Woody Allen,because I thought Ms.Farrow looked rather snobby and "goody two shoesy".I was prompted to buy the book after watching Barbara Walters interview with Ms.Farrow on 2/7/97-this is a wonderful read.I have to say,I still like Woody Allen films,but I believe he is the pervert he was made out to be by the media.Truth be told,as you will find out in the book,there is so much more to Mia Farrow than the fact that she had a relationship with Woody Allen.She is an extraordinary woman,and a wonderful actress.Any woman who has been through tragedy and joy in abundance should buy this book now.You won't regret it
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Summary: Beautifully written and speaks to the soul.
Review: I didn't know that people who were so selfless still exist! Yea, yea, yea - Mia has all that money, but so do many other Hollywood celebrities and you don't see them adopting orphaned children with challenging handicaps. One reviewer for this book seems to imply that Mia was trying to start her own orphanage. My question to him/her - what for? She certainly wasn't going to get an award for it. She is truly a remarkable woman who simply wants to share the benefit of her success to some children who truly need - she "acts" where other celebrities/people merely give "lip service." As far as her willingess to give herself to these children, she is an angel on earth. As for the rest of the book, I think it was well-written and I commend her on leaving intimate detail of her relationship with Frank Sinatra and Andre Previn out of the book. However, I do wonder why she stayed with Woody Allen all those years??? As a mother of two girls but with far less resources, I would not stay in a situation like that nor even have any type of contact with a man such as Allen. He is a disgrace and a disgust. I, too, will never be able to watch a Woody Allen movie again. What a shame that someone with his public visibility and intellectualism did not have the foresight to see how much damage this would do to his "family", not to mention Soon-Yi. Woody, you should hang your head in shame.
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Summary: Mia Farrow's book is a page-turner!
Review: I expectated the book to be about Ms. Farrow's problems with Woody Allen ... but what I found instead was guidance for life! From her childhood battle with polio to the death of her brother and her first attempts at earning a living, Ms. Farrow shares with the reader the early years that molded her lifelong quest to find meaning in her life. As each stage of her life unfolds against the backdrop of the tumultuous 60s and 70s, I found myself unable to put the book down--I literally read it in 24 hours. Now
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Summary: Review
Review: I had the privilege of going to school with Mia Farrow from 7th to 8th grade in Beverly Hills 90210 where she was precocious and keenly intelligent. Her book What Falls Away was poignant and brutally honest, and I applaud that effort. The work she has done with children and for children is monumental. I will always regret that I lost touch with her when the family moved to Spain.
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