Book: by Julie Andrews Edwards and Home Work by Julie Andrews Edwards with Emma Walton Hamilton
Genre: memoir
Publisher: Hyperion
Publication date: 2008 and 2019
Source: audiobooks
Summary: Julie Andrews grew up in a show biz family and got her start on the vaudeville circuit in the UK, which went on a bit longer than it did in the US. The finances of this venture were rocky and as Andrews' talent became apparent she took on the major bread-winning role for the family in her teens.
Home is about her childhood years and her initial successes in musical theater in the West End and Broadway, particularly in My Fair Lady.
Home Work continues the story by talking about the Hollywood years, with Mary Poppins and Sound of Music and continuing through Victor/Victoria.
In both books, we also learn about her birth family, her marriages, her children (including coauthor Emma Walton Hamilton), and the places she lived. Andrews generously shares the challenges in her life and the ways she dealt with them, some more successfully than others (like most of us).
Thoughts: I mentioned at the end of my review of Julie's Greenroom that I learned about the show when I watched one of many interviews of Julie Andrews after her memoir Home Work was released in October. With a little research, I discovered that Home Work is the second volume of her memoir. The first was called Home and was published in 2008.
After listening to Michelle Obama's Becoming on audio, Home by Julie Andrews was my next selection for an audio book.
It was lovely hearing Andrews' voice as she talked about her childhood in England (I love that she started with a love letter to the Thames with many of the same feelings I have for my hometown, some of which I shared last week). I pulled up Google maps to watch her travels around the UK on the vaudeville circuit. She often traveled by train which triggered my fond memories of train travel during our trip to England.
As I wrote at the end of my post about Julie's Greenroom, my biggest fascination with Julie Andrews is how she rebuilt her career after her voice was damaged by surgery in 1997. I'll have to wait until her third volume to get that story!
Appeal: Memoirs of Julie Andrews will appeal to her fans, of course, but also to anyone who loves behind-the-scenes stories about the theater and movies.
Have you read Home and Home Work? What did you think?
About Joy Weese Moll
a librarian writing about books