My Life So Far

Amazing, complex, fascinating

After reading this book, not only do I understand Jane Fonda a bit better, but I understand myself a bit better, also! Extremely well written and deeply felt, I can only say: read it and see for yourself. Wow.

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

I loved this book!

I felt that Ms. Fonda gave her all in this book. It is honest, gut wrenching and heart searing. She has gone through the fire and come out the other side a whole being. I really liked it and I really like her for her caring, bravery,and her honesty. She admits her mistakes and sticks up for her beliefs. I found this to be a profound read that is giving me hope for myself in my third act.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Poor Me......

Jane Fonda tries to enlist the reader's empathy in a series of unjustifiable ramblings about the lack of her father's love and the reason it was the impetus for wanting to 'make things better' in her life. Unfortunately, it seems to have turned out poorly for her in most of her efforts. For a woman who graduated from Vassar, I expected a much less shallow version of her chaotic life. There are others who have been through much more and have been deeply enriched and gone on to enrich others. Perhaps, in this third phase of her life, she can truly try to understand herself, see herself as others do lose the farce of being anything other than self-serving. Jane Fonda isn't the first last or only person who has suffered from the lack of her father's love and the absence of her mother. All empathy for that was whisked away when she embarked on her awkward ascent into acting and pseudo-adulthood. This reader is still waiting to see IF she will grow up? I won't be waiting around to find out.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

NiteOwl says it's a must read.........

If She takes the responibility for the deaths and suffering she was involved in! For example: The beatings the U.S. P.O.W.'S had to endure after she turned them into the commandant for trying to get the word out who they were and that they were still alive, to thier families! Is her proceeds for her book going to the families that don't have thier loved ones because of the atrocities she committed?

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

all around wonderful

This autobiography by Jane Fonda was wonderful. I could not put it down. I had never really followed her work, but was interested in her activism, but after reading it, I now want to see more of her films. The book is heartfelt, poignant, and also funny. Ms. Fonda put her heart and soul into writing this, and as a reader, you can tell right away. The book is divided in three acts, and in each one, ms. Fonda really touches you with what she has to write, from her difficult childhood, to her activism, to her marriages, to all that she does with teenagers today, and all the while incorporating the making of some of her biggest movies into the book. I would definately recommend this book!!

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

SHE is all of us

I have not put the book down, committing some passages to memory. A word to those who detest her for her Vietnam experience. We are now trading with Vietnam, adopting their babies and they are assisting us in our search for MIA's...please 'get over it' and move on - the rest of the world has. None of us has made all the 'right' decisions in our lives.

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

touching, brilliant, illuminating

wow! what a wonderful woman! she's always been my heroin, but she seemed so distant and perfect. after reading this, however you realize she was plagued by the same sorrows (some more horrific than anyone should have to endure) pain, joy, lonliness, in other words...she's a real person! she's so blessed with her ability to reach people. i would venture to say, the only morons who are giving this a bad review are the same narrow minded, right-winged nut jobs that are too stupid to read in the first place! open your mind and your heart will follow people!

2 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

Spoiled All about me whiner

I have always felt people were too tough on Jane Fonda! Now after reading her book, I feel she could benefit from a spanking and a few lessons on how to follow through with committments and realizing just how privileged her life has been. A TRUE LOVE FOR YOUR COUNTRY JANE? hmmm...Perhaps you served only to fulfill your self thoughts as if the country was a playground for your ever changing whining! J.d.larkin

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

her life so far??

Who gives a crap about her life so far. I seriously couldn't get passed the 2nd chapter.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A reviewer

I did not make it all the way through this book. The first few chapters were OK but I feel like it is her way of trying to show her political views and make people feel sorry for her.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Jane's Soapbox (again)

I just could not make it all the way through this book. The first few chapters were OK but once I realized this was just Jane's way of trying to drive home her political views, I gave it up.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Don't Bother

I was looking forward to reading this book; unfortunately, this book is really awful. Fonda divided her book into acts. Act I is a monotonous and repetitive whinefest: a suicidal mother and cold father are apparently responsible for distorting her self-image and self-esteem. Act I included some details I just didn't want to know. Act II is a sugar-coated and slanted historical narrative of Fonda's political 'activism' in the late sixties and seventies. Fonda 'voice' or style of writing reminds me of my high school students. Whenever my students learn new vocabulary words, they often try to use the words in sentences. Sadly, the new, big words sometimes just don't fit into the context of the sentences. The armchair psychology woven throughout the book is also pretty annoying. UPS just delivered a big box of books from Barnes and Noble--I think I will probably skip Act III.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Fonda at her best

I have always admired Jane Fonda and now even more so. 'My Life So Far' is a very articulate and honest account of her life and it is a very fascinating read. Forget about political differences (which although espoused in the book, are not its basis, nor is the book a platform for any political agenda). Read this with an open mind; the woman has experienced a lot in her life and much of her story could be very beneficial to many young people. It is clear that Fonda learned about and dealt with many of the things she discusses in the book the old fashioned way....she lived them. Miss Fonda, in addition to being an activist, actor, etc., you should have added writer to your many credits. The book was awesome.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Elegant, Honest, and Engaging

My Life So Far is inspirational in its message. I love that this woman will not be buttonholed into a caricature of what others would make of her. Humans grow and change over the years. This is Gods gift to us--the ability to learn from mistakes, not keep trashing people-in her case she could have stayed angry with Henry Fonda, but she wisely put a moratorium on anger. In doing so she shows us to deal with the past and then move on. For those who cannot see that one person is not the center of all the good or evil in the world, reading this book might just provide a more textured portrait of another person's life. Those of us who have been abused as little girls and suffered the consequences throughout our lives commend her for using her experiences to help others and not sit home focusing exclusively on herself.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

'The fluttering slowed; the wings grew still. Then peace.'

Never, in my experience, has an author so easily evoked cathartic tears and laughter as Jane Fonda has done right from the start of her book. I look forward each day to escaping into her marvelous writing style and allowing her honesty and insight to enrich me. Here is a book that embodies so very much more depth and truth than the usual memoir to which we have grown accustomed. For example, in chapter two she writes: 'It is late at night: I can't get Vanessa to sleep; I am despondent, again deep into the bulimia; I am lying on my back on the floor, with Vanessa lying on my chest. She lifts her head and looks straight into my eyes for what seems like an eternity. I feel she is looking into my soul, that she knows me, that she is my conscience. I get scared and have to look away. I don't want to be known.' Fonda's unpretentious but keen intelligence and sensitivity enthrall, enlighten, embrace, soothe, and delight like no other autobiography I have ever read (and I am an avid bio devourer...including her father's My Life, which she seamlessly cultivates into these pages as her title suggests). In addition, the photos and their captions are not only arranged to complement the text but are priceless in their self-disclosure. My Life So Far is an extremely honest, enjoyable, and moving look not only into Fonda's soul but our own. It transcends gender, class, or culture and breaks through the ego-built, interpersonal barriers of fear in regard to intimacy that so frighten each of us. And by so doing, Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda has written a remarkable hymn to the endless power of the higher self.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

an intelligent, examined, thoughtful life

i reluctantly picked up this book (i don't love celebrity bios) and ended up spending an hour and a half engrossed in it before finally buying it. I have always had an ambivalent relationship with ms fonda's public image--she seemed to veer too widely from steely determination to shallow unthoughtfulness, but this book really helps me be less judgemental of her (as if i had the right!). her candor, thoughtfulnes, and insight made for very interesting reading but i was particularly impressed by her equanimity re her life choices. as a young feminist who was disapointed by her seeming transformation into a big boobed arm ornament, i once again am (reluctantly?)entralled with her. this time i find myself coloring her a role model not just for her moral purpose or her disciplined body or her beauty or her bravery but for her mature, shrug-your-shoulders-accept-yourself-we-all-make-mistakes-and-isn't-li fe-a-great-journey equanimity. and boy, has she made some fascinating choices!

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Traitor Gets Rich While Soldiers Die

Who cares about this treasonous and traitorous woman? She should hang her head in shame over selling our fighting men down the drain. She is a national shame and a disgrace. I wish she would quietly move to North Vietnam or France.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

She won't go away

Another ploy to blame her bad choices on everyone else -- women, men in her bed with her husband. Her father, such a bad parent she had to forgive him finally before he died. It always seems she needs to dump it on the deceased. I really don't know how much of this to believe. Maybe if she lets them hook up her to a lie detector. (I borrowed this book. I purchase a lot of books, but I would never pay a penny for anything she wrote.)

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

The Real Jane

When you hear the name Jane Fonda, most individuals already have a set image. From either Hanoi Jane, Oscar Winning Actress, part of the Fonda Hollywood legacy, or wife of media mogul Ted Turner.
In reading her book you discover that she is all these things and many more. The book is part memoir, confessional, and a philosophical journey into this remarkable woman.
The read is more than a look at me book, but rather this is me. In her writings she is vulnerable and candid of the many peaks and valleys of her life.
She is also exposes her relationship with the many men in her life, from her father Henry Fonda to the mogul Ted Turner.
Fonda has had a certain rebirth late in life and is at a point where she is comfortable within her own skin. Yes, she has many good years ahead and the appropriate title My Life So Far does more than scratch the surface of the remarkable Jane Fonda.
An overriding theme is that women need to move beyond their restraints and live their lives as they see fit.

Omg!!

You know how you read a bio and you have to read thru the early years to get to the good stuff? Not here!!!! This book had me from page 1. She has had a very full interesting life and you should read about it!!!