All the Women in My Brain

May 23, 2022
Emmy-nominated actor Gilpin, star of Netflix’s GLOW, explores in her animated if addled debut the disappointments and triumphs of being an artist and a woman in a world that’s indifferent to both. She grins and cringes through the different phases of her life, as the Marlboro-smoking child of actor parents in the 1990s who trudges through the pain of an eating-disordered adolescence in boarding school, then goes on to study acting at Fordham to make a career for herself. Working with the material of her own life as an actor—from familiar casting-call humiliations to overwork-induced muscle spasms—Gilpin critiques societal expectations that circumscribe creative women to docile beings, while suggesting that it’s the unruly parts of women’s minds that should be tended to as wellsprings of creativity. As she moves through reflections on loneliness, shame, and finding meaning in her work, she balances profundities with humorous looks at the more mundane parts of her life, including romantic blunders in an attempted open relationship (“I wasn’t the hardened, sex-positive, thousand-yard-stare poem I insisted I was”). Oftentimes, though, Gilpin’s quippy humor trips over itself, making it difficult to locate the point beneath the surfeit of zingers and extended metaphors that refer to her depression and self-doubt as nagging “brainwomen.” This one’s best left to the fans.

August 15, 2022
A young, accomplished performer's life in theater, TV, and film. In this comic memoir, Gilpin (b. 1986), best known for her role as a female wrestler in the Netflix series GLOW, charts her journey as an actor and offers advice for other young women pursuing a similar path. The author chronicles her childhood as the daughter of show-business parents; awkward adolescence and struggles to reconcile self-doubt and artistic ambition; hard-won ascent in her chosen industry and routine endurance of humiliating tests of her professional resolve; and, finally, disappointment after the commercial failure of the film she hoped would launch her to superstardom. Gilpin is genuinely funny as a commentator on her own misadventures, though her style is sometimes overly clever and strained in its cultivation of zaniness. A challenge for Gilpin in telling her story is to present herself as an amusingly hapless underdog despite being blessed with good looks, a loving and prosperous family, and professional success. That challenge is best met in her descriptions of the ludicrous, and often grotesquely exploitative, environment of the entertainment industry, which she skewers with an insider's wisdom. On the other hand, the author's generalizations about cultural misogyny and gender inequities are somewhat trite and predictable. In noting an existential binary that has troubled her own self-identity for much of her adult life, Gilpin suggests, for instance, that "we womenfolk today are faced with a decision: Salem or Barbie"--i.e., a stark choice between stridently asserting one's independence or submissively appealing to others as a sexual object. The writing comes alive, however, when the author digs into the specific indignities she endured during her journey through the gauntlet of endless auditions and the merciless whims of those who orchestrated them. A quirky tale of lessons learned from the world of acting.

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August 1, 2022
In this memoir, Gilpin, best known for playing Debbie Eagan/Liberty Belle on the Netflix wrestling hit GLOW, bares the viscera of her life in showbiz. Raised by theater-actor parents, Gilpin enjoyed a boisterous childhood in the aisles and light booths of various venues, and spent her high-school years making trouble at boarding school. Her nascent adulthood was for exploring the bounds of a dramatic life: acting school, chaotic romance, and the 24-hour soap opera of being an artist in an urban space. As Gilpin's career evolved and her profile was elevated, harsh realizations about performance, vanity, and ego emerged, too. Gilpin's written voice makes for an unforgettable read. She spins entirely original patterns of phrasing and combines wickedly clear imagery with novel cultural references to convey unique human experiences--she'll make any noun a verb, and vice versa. Yet her writing is universal, never relying on the audience to know some obscure, niche thing. The book is riotously funny and braver than brave.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2022

"My brain is a room full of women who take turns at the wheel," writes actress Gilpin. Her memoir is more a series of essays where, in a stream-of-consciousness style, she riffs on female friendship, open relationships, getting married, buying a house, awards shows, the pitfalls of the acting profession, and more. Best known for her Emmy-nominated role on the TV series Glow, Gilpin came from old school showbiz parents, Jack Gilpin and Ann McDonough, both prominent theater and TV character actors. She toiled for years before hitting it big with Glow. She shares anecdotes about Glow, but more importantly, sheds light on how difficult it is to make it in show business though she admits there is a reward--"The Thing"--that moment when two actors really connect and the magic happens. Gilpin's prose is self-deprecating and often humorous but so metaphor-laden that it's almost laughable (though perhaps that was the point); readers may or may not find that annoying. VERDICT For fans of Glow and aspiring actors who want to know what they're getting into.--Rosellen "Rosy" Brewer

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