The Mighty Franks
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3.3 • 4 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
**One of the Telegraph's 50 best books of the year!**Longlisted for the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize**
The boundaries of family life are upended in this memoir, which turns on the author’s lifelong relationship with his enthralling yet deeply possessive aunt, a powerhouse Hollywood screenwriter whose turbulent nature slowly reveals itself.
All his life Michael Frank has been fawned over by his aunt, who was a Hollywood screenwriter in the 1970s. She loves him more than life itself. At first, when he is a young boy, this is a very good thing. He takes refuge in her adoration and attention. But soon things turn bad and her hold on the entire family begins to spiral out of control in increasingly unpredictable and volatile ways.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this complex and fascinating memoir, journalist Frank describes the spell cast over his childhood by his screenwriter aunt and her fury at his attempts to break away from her. Even by Hollywood standards, the Franks were unusual: Frank's mother's brother, Irving Ravetch, married his father's sister, Harriet "Hank" Frank Jr., and both families lived in close proximity in Laurel Canyon. His childless aunt and uncle settled on Frank as a substitute son, dazzling him with gifts and praise. Yet as Frank became conscious of the damage that Hank's imperious nature inflicted on family and friends, he realized how necessary, and painful, separating himself from her would be. For over three decades, Ravetch and Hank were an extremely successful screenwriting team (Norma Rae, Hud, The Long Hot Summer, etc.). In thoughtful, fluid prose, their nephew evokes the magic and sophistication of a vanished Hollywood intelligentsia schooled in the language of cinema. Readers will be enthralled by the affecting portraits of the two central figures: the aunt whose drive and charming idiosyncrasies concealed an impulsive cruelty, and the child struggling to make sense of the complex, damaged woman trying to control him. Frank doesn't fully investigate the reasons behind his aunt's behavior, but the women he describes is as iconic and memorable as the characters she created for the screen.
