A Pocketful of Happiness
A Memoir
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- CHF 15.00
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- CHF 15.00
Beschreibung des Verlags
Academy Award–nominated actor Richard E. Grant’s “genuine and compelling” (The New York Times), “moving and entertaining” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) memoir about finding happiness in even the darkest of days.
Richard E. Grant emigrated from Swaziland to London in 1982, with dreams of making it as an actor. Unexpectedly, he met and fell in love with a renowned dialect coach Joan Washington. Their relationship and marriage, navigating the highs and lows of Hollywood, parenthood, and loss, lasted almost forty years. When Joan died in 2021, her final challenge to him was to find a “pocketful of happiness in every day.”
This honest and frequently hilarious memoir is written in honor of that challenge—Richard has faithfully kept a diary since childhood, and in these entries, he shares raw details of everything he has experienced: both the pain of losing his beloved wife and the excitement of their life together, from the role that transformed his life overnight in Withnail and I to his thrilling Oscar Award nomination thirty years later for Can You Ever Forgive Me?.
In “one of the bravest, strongest, funniest memoirs I’ve ever read” (Bonnie Garmus, New York Times bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry), A Pocketful of Happiness is a powerful, funny, and moving celebration of life’s unexpected joys.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Actor Grant (With Nails) delivers an excellent memoir that's part journal, part love letter to his late wife, Joan Washington. Mostly, he chronicles his and Joan's ups and downs across 38 years, from their meeting in 1982, when he hired her as a dialect coach to "iron out" his Swazi accent, to her cancer diagnosis, decline, and eventual death. He also peppers in witty gossip, including the time he met "his lifelong idol" Barbara Streisand, descriptions of his friendship with Melissa McCarthy ("Melissa is, in fact, morose, always late for work, never knows her lines, is inconsiderate, selfish, and we did not get along, at all," he tells an audience, to "big laughs and an even bigger hug from her"), and a particularly endearing account of the time he accepted a role as the Spice Girls' manager in Spice World to please his eight-year-old daughter. Though he doesn't sugarcoat the challenges of caring for Joan during her illness or his grief after she died ("I feel and look like an old turtle without my shell, trying to navigate the world on my own, having lost my loving compass"), Grant's tender recollections effectively conjure on the page the couple's enduring connection. The result is a moving and entertaining celebration of life and love.
