Keaton memoir engrossing, thoroughly entertaining

I was so engrossed with the subject material during a first reading of Diane's Keaton's Then Again, that I forgot to take notes; and this from someone who'd never seen a Keaton movie.

For the record, she was the kooky partner of Woody Allen in Annie Hall (1977), a role which earned her an Oscar, and also had well-publicised relationships with Allen, and superstars Warren Beatty and Al Pacino.

I don't know who said it, but we are "what our parents intend us to be".

Keaton's parents were Jack Hall, civil engineer and underwater explorer, whose "bibles" were self-help books such as, Think And Grow Rich, and Dorothy Hall, nee Keaton, churchgoing, post-WW2 housewife who filled her unhappy hours by posting "what to do" notices around the house and filling 87 journals with her secret thoughts.

These reveal some worries as far as her four children were concerned, especially her eldest, Diane. For going through school getting Cs or worse put a damper on a career requiring academic excellence.

Luckily, the family had money, enough to finance a year at acting school in New York, which led to a part in Hair. The rest, as they say, is history.

When "mom" (born 1921) died in 2008 after ever-so-slowly succumbing to Alzheimer's, Keaton's discovery of the journals resulted in a new twist on "memoirs", a sort of dual blood-letting, as Diane seems to have inherited her mother's anxiety and self-deprecation.

How she became a movie star is no mystery; she simply played anxious and self-deprecating females. Even so, there's an "oh, well, that's life" quality about Then Again, maybe because the leading lady and supporting cast are so interesting.

Apart from Diane, who's frank about her early battles with bulimia and a liking for all the wrong foods, and men, there's Dorothy Hall's dad, Roy, who takes bad timing to new heights by dragging the family from Kansas to California, and then abandoning wife and three daughters to fend for themselves.

No wonder Diane's mother, in a search for security, married a man who seldom gave her a thought.

Then there's Grandma Hall, Diane's paternal grandmother, who owns boarding houses, treats her tenants like sub-humans, and has money stashed in banks all over Los Angeles.

I don't want to spoil readers' enjoyment of what is a thoroughly entertaining book by adding any more to this review, as there are some surprises in the final chapters.

Suffice to say Then Again might wake female readers up to the possibility that they might not know their mothers, and to get those skeletons out of the cupboards while they can. For mothers who have unfinished business with male figures and daughters, all I can say is "good luck".

- Ian Williams is a Dunedin writer and composer.