From Publishers Weekly
Oona Chaplin (1925-1991) was the estranged daughter of Eugene O'Neill, a debutante who dated J.D. Salinger and Orson Welles before marrying Charlie Chaplin when she was 18 and he was three times her age. Although her full life merits book-length consideration, this is instead a memoir, beginning in the late 1970s, of her early and long widowhood. The author, a novelist (Albany Park, etc.), had divorced Oona's son but had occasional cause to approach Oona for unpaid alimony. She also served at times as Oona's clairvoyant, but here, despite some fine writing, she lacks the vision to create from inadequate exposure to Oona and limited access to her friends, relatives and journals a worthy portrait of her subject as a child, wife, mother and alcoholic. Hints of Oona's personal life emerge only occasionally and in no particular order in a work dominated by the author's memories of her awkward and infrequent encounters with Oona. Whatever sympathy Patrice Chaplin gains in her attempts to find help for her own addict son?by asking his grandmother for a new, bigger house?is lost when, at the end of the book, so much is left unanswered. Oona had eight children, but their roles in this memoir are mostly limited to the author's usually unsuccessful attempts to contact them. This sort of honest but frail journalism prevails, relieved briefly by a lucid account of Oona's relationship with her unforgiving father. The beautiful photographs of the Chaplin clan are a poignant reminder that here is a wealthy, complicated star who remains hidden despite Chaplin's effort. Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Though she was Eugene O'Neill's daughter, Charlie Chaplin's third wife (married at the age of 18), and the mother of actress Geraldine Chaplin, Oona O'Neill Chaplin (192591) did not lead the kind of life that merits a book-length recounting, especially one as lax and disorganized as this one by her former daughter-in-law. Novelist Patrice Chaplin (The Forgotten, 1984, etc.) makes grand claims for her subject's deep well-springs of talent: ``She was a hidden star,'' a ``queen of movieland's royal family.'' Again and again we are told how her charisma and vivacity and beauty were admired by all who met her. She may well have been ``a barefoot sprite, around whom happened marvellous, secret adventures as subtle as her perfume.'' But the truth is that apart from marrying well and having eight children, Oona didn't do very much. Nor is Chaplin is able to convincingly capture her subject's personality. Perhaps part of the problem is her status as Oona's ex-daughter-in- law, a strange twilight zone that provided enough closeness to moot a biographer's objectivity, yet too much distance for an intimate rapprochement. What we are left with is a series of recollected conversations and meetings, a few biographical details, and much too much about Patrice Chaplin. However, her understanding of the sadness of Oona's situation is keen--talent squandered, hopes hopelessly reposed in others, disappointments with her children. Oona seemingly lived so much through the lives of others that she never really had a life to call her own. Even her vices weren't her own--like both her parents, she found constant comfort in alcohol. Toward the end of her life, occasional tipsiness gave way to frequent and appalling scenes as she began to drink suicidally. Too few tidbits for Charlie Chaplin fans, and even the few Oonaphiles out there will be disappointed. (16 pages b&w photos) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
