The Rainbow Comes and Goes
A Mother and Son On Life, Love, and Loss
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4.5 • 551 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A touching and intimate correspondence between Anderson Cooper and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, offering timeless wisdom and a revealing glimpse into their lives
Though Anderson Cooper has always considered himself close to his mother, his intensely busy career as a journalist for CNN and CBS affords him little time to spend with her. After she suffers a brief but serious illness at the age of ninety-one, they resolve to change their relationship by beginning a year-long conversation unlike any they had ever had before. The result is a correspondence of surprising honesty and depth in which they discuss their lives, the things that matter to them, and what they still want to learn about each other.
Both a son’s love letter to his mother and an unconventional mom’s life lessons for her grown son, The Rainbow Comes and Goes offers a rare window into their close relationship and fascinating life stories, including their tragedies and triumphs. In these often humorous and moving exchanges, they share their most private thoughts and the hard-earned truths they’ve learned along the way. In their words their distinctive personalities shine through—Anderson’s journalistic outlook on the world is a sharp contrast to his mother’s idealism and unwavering optimism.
An appealing memoir with inspirational advice, The Rainbow Comes and Goes is a beautiful and affectionate celebration of the universal bond between a parent and a child, and a thoughtful reflection on life, reminding us of the precious insight that remains to be shared, no matter our age.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The intensely intimate exchanges between CNN reporter Anderson Cooper and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, peel back the veil on Vanderbilt’s gilded life as an heiress of one of America’s wealthiest families. Cooper’s gentle and inquisitive prodding—spliced with reflections on his own life and upbringing—let Vanderbilt testify to the pain of growing up without a father and living with a mother more interested in partying with royalty than raising her daughter. Vanderbilt writes with exquisite detail and languid prose, never shying away from admitting her own mistakes, including dropping out of high school and ricocheting from one man’s arms to the next.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Vanderbilt and her son, Cooper, relate the touching story of how an epistolary exchange created new emotional intimacy between them. After fashion designer and society icon Vanderbilt, now 92, became seriously ill in 2015, Cooper, a globe-trotting journalist, questioned their closeness and realized much had gone unsaid between them. He sets about rectifying that by opening an email exchange that proves illuminating and healing. Vanderbilt's early years were rife with tragedy, and her father died before she was two years old; in parallel, Cooper's father died when Cooper was 10. Vanderbilt writes of having no one to talk to about the turmoil around her childhood and adolescence, leading to countless regrettable turns such as dropping out at 17 to marry a decades-older man, and it never occurred to her to share or explain to her sons what she endured. Cooper recalls feeling loved by his mother, but also feeling that he barely knew her. As Cooper delves into their respective pasts, he starts to understand that, following the deaths of his father and older brother, he also took big risks motivated by the out-of-control circumstances surrounding him. Through greater openness, Cooper and Vanderbilt achieve a new closeness, demonstrating in this intimate and lively read that it's never too late to have a rich relationship with family.
Customer Reviews
My New favorite Book!
A delicious read! Thank you Anderson and Gloria for sharing your brilliant idea! I hope this inspires everyone to do with their loved ones.. Gloria how wise you are. I learned so much about you and how to live life! I do agree, The Rainbow comes and goes!
The Rainbow Comes and Goes
Just at the Introduction I submerged into The Rainbow Comes and Goes describing not only Gloria and Anderson, but kind of my own Life, Love and Loss in a different culture and social class.
I hope they open a blogger, so we can go deeper into the Rainbow!
An intimate reflection
This is a touching dialogue between a mother and son about each other, their similarities, their differences, the history of their lives looked at from, as Soren Kierkegaard said,..life lived forward but understood backward.
Born and bred in a chaos not of her making, Gloria Vanderbilt has finally arrived and settled along the edges of the storm, closer to the shores where the pools and eddies are less tormented and tossed. She may yet crest the next gentle wave and find that it deposits her in tranquility. And she has given this greatest of gifts to her son; an unveiling of herself and a reflection of himself.