by Diane Keaton
First published 2011
Diane Keaton opens her mother Dorothy Hall's collection of 85 personal journals, more than 1000 pages filled with photographs, newspaper clippings, and creative collages. The actress famous for Annie Hall discovers her mother's lifelong dream of a fuller, more beautiful existence captured in decades of meticulous documentation. Keaton weaves together her own journey to stardom with intimate details from Dorothy's writings, revealing her relationships with Woody Allen, Warren Beatty, and Al Pacino alongside her struggles with bulimia and her decision to adopt two children later in life. As she reads through her mother's creative outpourings, Keaton constructs both a family portrait and her own story of love and friendship. The dual narrative celebrates Dorothy Hall as an extraordinary woman bursting with artistic energy while examining what matters most in life through the lens of maternal devotion and personal growth.
Genres: biography, family, family-life, autobiography, memoir, non-fiction, biography-memoir, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: dual-narrative, found-family
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
262 pages · Hardcover · Random House
Content warnings: eating-disorder