ANTONIA QUIRKE on Kathleen Turner's New Memoir

Antonia Quirke, author of Choking on Marlon Brando, reviews Kathleen Turner's new memoir Send Yourself Roses in The Times: "Oh, this is a very mad memoir indeed. I challenge you to put it down for even one moment. Up Turner rises — unfettered now, vibrant, and gives us a series of the maddest chapters I have ever read (“Hillary Clinton said I should publish my speeches”) in which she insists she likes this or that friend because they accessorise well with belts. She accepts her genius (“all my experiences and all my power and knowledge and connections and finances. And the legacy I want to leave”). She celebrates her voice (“my voice has been called smoky, husky, sexy, tobacco-cured, scotch-laden, iconic . . .”) and her need to communicate on deeper levels (“at the spa that night at dinner, I couldn’t resist reading an essay by Maya Angelou to the whole group”). She leaves her husband of more than 20 years, visits AA, supports the Long Island fishing community, lectures on stage technique at college (a personally designed course called Practical Acting: Just Shut Up and Do It!) and over the radio about the Patriot Act, challenges the Broadway audience (“f*** American puritanical hypocrisy, f*** it all”) and talks to old people on the telephone (“most of them don’t know who I am, which is rather sweet”). There may be four or five people left in New York who haven’t yet been helped by Turner. Kathleen, I am in awe. Be madder still, please. Because, really, who gives a fig about sanity anyway? Nobody ever comments on it. So, take it away, woman. Go shopping in the third person (“Kathleen Turner wants a bacon roll with no salad”). Fall in love again (“God, I’m horny”). And after Hillary Clinton has projected your speeches on the moon, get up on stage and — quite seriously, it’s so obvious — give the best Gertrude in the history of the theatre. All the while knowing that this, that more, that everything, should be yours. "