Home Work

Julie Andrews picks up the life story she began in Home, her earlier memoir about a difficult childhood and her rise as a stage singer. This book opens as she arrives in Hollywood and becomes a film star with Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. She looks back on her film career, from its peaks to its hard stretches, and on her work with major figures in cinema and television, including Victor/Victoria.

The book also covers her private life as she adjusts to an unfamiliar and demanding industry. She writes about the pressure that came with sudden success, becoming a mother for the first time, the end of her first marriage, and raising two stepchildren before adopting two more children. It also tells of her relationship with director Blake Edwards, a volatile and brilliant man, and of the many films they made together.

Written with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, the memoir is candid and warm, and it mixes humor, heartache and encouragement as it traces her years in film.