Customer Reviews

Fairy Tales Can Come True: How a Driven Woman Changed Her Destiny

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

In this book I found an enlightening story about the struggle to get to the top. A great description of the amount of dedication and self-sacrifice necessary to overcome obstacles, define (and redefine) goals, and to never stop moving forward. For any young woman looking to see what it takes to get to the top of her respective field, this is a wonderful story-if it is taken with a grain of salt. Even though Mrs. Klieman seems to find strength in her struggle in a man's world, she digresses to hypocrisy and to being just like a man more than she gives herself credit for.
You can call her a slut, or a liberated woman (that's the way it was in the 70s according to her). You can call her driven, or you can call her obsessed to a fault. You can say she is focused, or you can say that she ignores what fails to progress her theme-she is a good lawyer after all.
She writes that she never wanted to be placed ahead because she was a woman. But in one part of the book she calls a judge who also happened to be her ex (they dated while she was CLERKING!!)so that he could get her an interview with someone she otherwise would have had to wait months to see. This is just one example of many sordid situations. She is appalled when she is passed up for a judgeship because, according to her, she was too pretty. Yet there is clear evidence that she uses her looks just as much as she uses her brains. She also seems to think she is a super good-looking lady. She mentions it so, so, so many times it starts to get ridiculous!!! (is it just me, or is she not really that hot?)
In the book she was an alcoholic, a workaholic, vomited involuntarily on a weekly basis, was someone who couldn't carry on a relationship, never had kids, and basically admits to cheating on her husband (and wonders why he didn't want to have anything to do with the book). She had no life outside of the law. The best years of her life went to her clients. I thought the point was work to live, not live to work. She does the latter, incessantly. If she were a man, her life wouldn't be that remarkable. She had a part to play in every major obstacle she faced in life-she did it to herself. So many people throughout the book helped her that it's hard to believe she is self-made in the true sense. But the biggest gripe is the fact that she did not find happiness until AFTER she stopped practicing law. Her life during her years of practice totally sucked-I'm not sure what message that is supposed to send. If this is how you want to get to the top, be my guest.

"Look at my pictures with famous people. Read about my new house so you can see how much money I made. Admire me because I say I kept my extra-marital affair secret so that I wouldn't hurt or embarass my ex-husband or my current husband's wife. And for God's sake, don't notice the inconsistency between that and the fact that I rushed to write this book about exactly that affair. AREN'T I SPECIAL?"

Narcissists can be charming, but the preening and self-absorption become boring pretty quickly. In this case, extremely quickly.

This is one of the worst books I've ever read. The writing is extremely juvenile and Ms. Klieman is not remotely as interesting as she seems to think she is. She doesn't know the first thing about empowering women. It appears she lives in a fairy tale world of her own imagination, but imagining something doesn't make it real.

This misguided manufactured celebrity is a perfect example of how someone of average intelligence, given enough greed and encouragement, can make a pile of money. That's about it.The writing style reveals worlds about her literary insularity.The monumental lack of self-awareness makes this book a good candidate for the Horror genre. If books by famous people interest you, I'd advise something by a professional wrestler. They know how to apply makeup, which is more than I can say for Ms. Klieman.

Ms. Klieman comes across as vapid and tiresome. Save your money and your time for something worthwhile--and interesting. This is neither.

The best part of the book is Klieman's discussion of her cases and her law career. She is clearly a talented woman, but also a monstrously self-absorbed one. But perhaps that's the curse of the successful woman...

Rikki Klieman is not much of a writer and less of a person. There is nothing here of interest or value.

I bought this book because I have admired Kleiman's work on CourtTV. The book was a disappointment to me because:

* I can no longer think of Klieman as a role model for anyone, personally or professionally, because she has apparently been a lifelong user of men in her work as well as in her personal life. One minute she complains of her treatment based on her gender, the next minute she brags about using her gender to her advantage in the workplace. I'm quite unclear as to how she can be a role model for lawyers, because while Kleiman clearly has been extremely successful in her chosen profession, throughout the book she tells the reader how the work almost killed her, ruined her health, ruined her personal life, etc. I can't see how anyone would want to emulate that.

*Klieman tells at great length of her representation of a fugitive cop killer, and how noble she felt when arranging for the woman to spend time with her family before turning herself in (and how she did this against the express advice of the FBI, local law enforcement, and the DA's office). I just wonder how Klieman would feel about another lawyer doing the same thing if the dead cop in question were to someday be Klieman's current husband, Bill Bratton.

*Too many times while reading the book I just couldn't like this woman because of her arrogance. For one thing, Klieman felt the need to inform the reader ad nauseum that she is pretty, oh so pretty. And of being able to get her hair done in LA on a moment's notice shortly after her husband was named the new Police Commissioner, Klieman writes, "It's good to be the wife of the king." To me, she just came off in the book as being much too full of herself and waaaayy overly impressed by her own physical attributes.

I wish I had skipped the book and just continued to remember Klieman as an accomplished lawyer who did a nice job of commenting about trials on CourtTV. Instead, I now think of her as someone who has done very well in the world, but I'm not sure she's done much good.

I was very disappointed in this book. The entire book is as phony as the author.

For some one who freely acknowledges that she comes from a privileged background with doting parents who called her Miss Remarkable (not that there's anything wrong with that) it's hard to find any inspiration in her success. The adversity she has overcome is of her own making and barely worth mentioning, compared to the hands that life deals to many people. When you think of the six billion people on the planet and their relative opportunities, here is a privileged person who rose to the occasion to enjoy her position as one of the best educated, best clothed, best housed and best fed people on the planet. Certainly any of us reading this review is at the top of the world heap in terms of our basic needs being met, and she's more privileged than lots of us. She was born on third base and thinks she hit a home run. I'd rather read about some one who has shown some real character in the face of real adversity.