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frasersimons 's review for:
The Beauty of Living Twice
by Sharon Stone
“It would be fair to say I fucked myself.”
This year I’ve read more celebrity memoirs than I have ever in my dang life. I picked this one up because I remember seeing a tweet by Sharon Stone where she was pretty much just begging people to realize that Covid was not hypothetical bullshit and she’s putting people in the ground because of it. I don’t remember exactly what she said, but I remember it was desperate and full of rage. My library recommended this to me and I instantly recalled that tweet.
It opens with Stone talking about her having a stroke and what it was like to bleed into your brain and your face. Then have a doctor advocate for an extremely dangerous procedure that would probably kill you, had not a nurse speak up with an alternative, allowing her to fire her doctor and buy time enough to figure out what was happening. It turns out she needed to have some kind of spinal surgery, relearn how to walk, and get back the use of her short term memory. They found that out eventually because she begged her best friend, telling her that she felt like she was dying, to convince them to take another shot at a diagnosis by using a microscopic camera that was moved up to her brain stem, which was disintegrating, or something?
That’s how this thing starts, okay.
It ends with Sharon Stone, for maybe the fourth time, reiterating how much victims of sexual assault and abuse need solidarity and compassion and help and closes it out with hot line numbers.
In between she talks about things like being told she wasn’t fuckable enough at 34 to make it in the business 6 months before she started in Basic Instinct. Or how her producer told her on another set to fuck her co-star because then they’d have good on screen chemistry. She told him, and others, that if fucking a shitty actor to make him an _okay_ one, she suggested they all go fuck him themselves and leave her out of it.
That’s around the time she says it would be fair to say she fucked herself. She reported people who harassed her and others, reported people who showed up drunk or high or ill prepared, and when she was asked to do things she didn’t want to do, she said ‘no’.
That doesn’t even go into her personal loss and abuse. It’s a pretty heavy book. I wasn’t expecting it, to be honest. She laughs at herself as well, it’s not all tears. Saying she repeatedly has put her foot in her mouth but continues to grow and learn.
I think, because I listened to it on audio, this hit in unexpected ways. Usually memoirs like this are read sort-of without emotion, or by someone else, and it almost always is worse than just reading the book. However, Stone narrates this incredibly well. She doesn’t try to control her voice. You can tell she is about to lose it as her voice warbles or pauses. Turns out she can deliver lines extremely well. Who knew?
This year I’ve read more celebrity memoirs than I have ever in my dang life. I picked this one up because I remember seeing a tweet by Sharon Stone where she was pretty much just begging people to realize that Covid was not hypothetical bullshit and she’s putting people in the ground because of it. I don’t remember exactly what she said, but I remember it was desperate and full of rage. My library recommended this to me and I instantly recalled that tweet.
It opens with Stone talking about her having a stroke and what it was like to bleed into your brain and your face. Then have a doctor advocate for an extremely dangerous procedure that would probably kill you, had not a nurse speak up with an alternative, allowing her to fire her doctor and buy time enough to figure out what was happening. It turns out she needed to have some kind of spinal surgery, relearn how to walk, and get back the use of her short term memory. They found that out eventually because she begged her best friend, telling her that she felt like she was dying, to convince them to take another shot at a diagnosis by using a microscopic camera that was moved up to her brain stem, which was disintegrating, or something?
That’s how this thing starts, okay.
It ends with Sharon Stone, for maybe the fourth time, reiterating how much victims of sexual assault and abuse need solidarity and compassion and help and closes it out with hot line numbers.
In between she talks about things like being told she wasn’t fuckable enough at 34 to make it in the business 6 months before she started in Basic Instinct. Or how her producer told her on another set to fuck her co-star because then they’d have good on screen chemistry. She told him, and others, that if fucking a shitty actor to make him an _okay_ one, she suggested they all go fuck him themselves and leave her out of it.
That’s around the time she says it would be fair to say she fucked herself. She reported people who harassed her and others, reported people who showed up drunk or high or ill prepared, and when she was asked to do things she didn’t want to do, she said ‘no’.
That doesn’t even go into her personal loss and abuse. It’s a pretty heavy book. I wasn’t expecting it, to be honest. She laughs at herself as well, it’s not all tears. Saying she repeatedly has put her foot in her mouth but continues to grow and learn.
I think, because I listened to it on audio, this hit in unexpected ways. Usually memoirs like this are read sort-of without emotion, or by someone else, and it almost always is worse than just reading the book. However, Stone narrates this incredibly well. She doesn’t try to control her voice. You can tell she is about to lose it as her voice warbles or pauses. Turns out she can deliver lines extremely well. Who knew?