What I’m Reading: Out of the Corner

I am a HUGE Dirty Dancing fan.  I remember going to the movie at the theatre.  I was in love with Patrick Swayze…I thought Jennifer Grey was so wonderful with hair that I would have loved to have.  I loved the coming-of-age story.  I’ve loved this so much that I’ve rewatched it several times, which normally I never do, and I’ve seen it as a play.

When I saw that Jennifer Grey had a memoir out, I knew I just had to read it.  The book is Out of the Corner by Jennifer Grey.

The beginning of the book almost had me stop reading.  Well, not the first part…the first part about her nose had me interested.  Then there is so much drug abuse and risky behavior that it was turning me off.  She was name-dropping and all of the names she dropped were people I didn’t know as they were older Hollywood people.  My interest was bottoming out and I thought I wouldn’t finish the book.

Then the book got to the 1980s and I found it much more interesting and I was really glad that I had stuck with it.  I was a busy mom in the late 80s and early 90s with little kids.  I had no idea that she was friends with MaDonna and that she dated  Michael J. Fox, Johnny Depp, William Baldwin, and George Stephanopoulos.  All of this I did find interesting…but most interesting to me were the struggles she went through with her appearance.

Here is what Amazon had to say:
“In this beautiful, close-to-the bone account, Jennifer Grey takes readers on a vivid tour of the experiences that have shaped her, from her childhood as the daughter of Broadway and film legend Joel Grey, to the surprise hit with Patrick Swayze that made her America’s sweetheart, to her inspiring season eleven win on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars.

Throughout this intimate narrative, Grey richly evokes places and times that were defining for a generation—from her preteen days in 1970s Malibu and wild child nights in New York’s club scene, to her roles in quintessential movies of the 1980s, including The Cotton Club, Red Dawn, and her breakout performance in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. With self-deprecating humor and frankness, she looks back on her unbridled, romantic adventures in Hollywood. And with enormous bravery, she shares the devastating fallout from a plastic surgery procedure that caused the sudden and stunning loss of her professional identity and career. Grey inspires with her hard-won battle back, reclaiming her sense of self from a culture and business that can impose a narrow and unforgiving definition of female worth. She finds, at last, her own true north and starts a family of her own, just in the nick of time.

Distinctive, moving, and powerful, told with generosity and pluck, Out of the Corner is a memoir about a never-ending personal evolution, a coming-of-age story for women of every age.”

Here Jennifer talks about the book in this interview.  It was interesting to me…

Amazon gave the book 4.5 stars.  I’m going to say 4.2.  The second half of the book picked up and made all of the difference.  It picked up enough that I can honestly say, I recommend it.

You can find the book HERE if you are interested.