From Publishers Weekly
It's been 15 years since Bacall wrote By Myself, a rich, if necessarily incomplete, autobiography that contained immensely touching accounts of the life of her husband, Humphrey Bogart, and of his painful death in 1957. In her new memoir, she makes it clear that she still judges people and life by Bogart's standards-high ones. Her narrative is fragmentary, almost breathless, but full of raw personality and almost clumsy directness. Two topics weave in and out of the staccato story: motherhood and acting. Bacall's accounts of her theatrical triumphs (Cactus Flower, Applause) and failures (Franklin Street, Good-bye Charlie) are more engaging than her reports of the deep concern she has for her three children (a son and daughter from her marriage with Bogart, and the youngest, the son of Jason Robards). She tends to share details only a mother needs to know. But her dedication to acting-and she means the stage, not the screen-is engrossing: "Acting requires boldness," she tells us. "Laying your life on the line eight times a week is not for the meek and mild." Bacall is certainly not meek. She is brave enough to present her life without excuses. Photos not seen by PW. 200,000 first printing; BOMC selection. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Bacall wants the world to know who she is now: not merely a famous celluloid image, or Humphrey Bogart's other half, but a woman who has experienced both loss and achievement in her career as well as in her personal life. With such an aim in mind, her new book reads almost as an extended footnote to her more comprehensive autobiography, Lauren Bacall by Myself (LJ 2/1/79). She fills gaps in the chronology of her first book with sensitive ruminations on her family life, her marriages to Bogart and Jason Robards, her friendships with the likes of Laurence Olivier and John Huston, and her stage, screen, and television projects. Her unconventional stream-of-consciousness approach occasionally seems undisciplined. Yet, despite such foibles, her forthright style is honest, engaging, and often poignant as she speaks of career highs and hiatuses, of loneliness and love. Readers who want to know about Bacall's early career should refer to her first book. For the quiet reflections of a true star, Now is the book to read. Recommended for popular biography collections. [BOMC main selection.]-Jayne Plymale-Jackson, Univ. of Georgia Libs., Athen.--Jayne Plymale-Jackson, Univ. of Georgia Libs., AthensCopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
As Bacall tells readers right up front, this is not a chronological autobiography in the manner of her earlier By Myself (1985), nor is it a sequel. Rather, this smallish book offers an anecdotal look back at the last 15 years of Bacall's life, in which she is mostly concerned with work, friends, family, and home. Though Bacall is as frank and charming a raconteur as ever, she doesn't have that much material to work with here. Her stories about refurbishing a house or the ups and downs of life with her children are more noteworthy for the way she tells them than for what she's saying. Most interesting are Bacall's musings on what she wants life to be like for her now, and how, after so many years alone, she is once again ready for love. It is certainly refreshing to see an older woman portrayed (if only by herself) as seasoned yet vital, still questioning, and still questing. This is a Book-of-the-Month Club selection with a 200,000 printing, so expect plenty of demand. Ilene Cooper


From Kirkus Reviews
Following in the monosyllabic wake of Katharine Hepburn's Me comes Bacall's Now: essays on love, work, children, and friendship. They're a bit makeshift but very human and, finally, offer a likable portrait of an interesting, complex survivor. For those who haven't heard from Bacall since her 1979 autobiography By Myself, she's a bit lonely. She's married off her children, and they all have a pretty good relationship, even though everyone has had ups and downs. She's trying to sell her house in Amagansett, N.Y., because she's not there enough, what with trips to London and Paris. She's ``traveling solo'': no men on the horizon, though at this point she feels she could align herself with Mr. Right. But is he ever hard to find! If the truth be told, there's never been anyone to match Bogie (and this, Bacall says, is the right spelling). In fact, these days she's practically channeling him (``the core of Bogie resides in me''). It's hard to get work even for a legend, and work is what has always defined her. So she's feeling a little tender and wondering what the future holds in store and after all, no one said life was easy. She emerges, even with a mantel full of little Henry Moores and memories of an amazing list of friends (Lenny Bernstein, Spence Tracy, Larry and Vivien, etc.), like an American woman approaching 70. She's a classy Jewish mother who tries to remain nonjudgmental as her only daughter, Leslie, is married by a Tibetan priest. And Bogie's baby is a grandma (she doesn't babysit). In describing how she took Leslie to the L.A. house on Mapleton Drive that she shared with Bogart and their two young children, she tries hard to show us that they were not just celluloid myths--they were real. Bacall's reminiscences of famous people are a little too dutiful. (Where is her famous sense of humor?) But her documentation of getting older, like Hepburn's, is real and recognizable to the aging rest of us. (40 b&w photos, not seen) (First printing of 200,000; Book-of-the-Month Club selection) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
"CANDID AND HONEST...A philosophical looking-backward and forward--an inquiry into the question 'Is that all there is?' "
--Liz Smith
New York Newsday
"FRANK AND AMUSING...[AND] BRIMMING WITH CONFESSIONS...Part career memoir and part meditation on what it's like to be a single woman of lingering glamour, enduring vitality and advancing age...The book has the Bacall voice behind it. Her writing echoes her deep, sardonic, no-nonsense timbre and jazzy tempo....Bacall is at her best when talking about friends she has loved and watched die. Bernstein, she says, was more than a little seductive; Huston, more than a little remote; Olivier, a survivor to the end."
--Chicago Sun-Times
"HER PROSE IS SPARE AND HONEST....A kaleidoscope of thoughts and ideas on loneliness, aging, and above all, surviving...There are also poignant reminiscences of the golden years of Hollywood and many of its leading creators."
--The Washington Post Book World
"SHE REMINDS US OF SOME FAMILIAR TRUTHS WORTH ATTENDING TO. . . .What she's writing about, Ms. Bacall explains, is 'life' and indeed her musings about getting older, about intimations of mortality, about living solo, about letting go of one's children will resonate with women who, like her, are of a certain age."
--The New York Times Book Review
"ENGROSSING. . .POIGNANT."
--People



From the Inside Flap
"CANDID AND HONEST...A philosophical looking-backward and forward--an inquiry into the question 'Is that all there is?' "
--Liz Smith
New York Newsday
"FRANK AND AMUSING...[AND] BRIMMING WITH CONFESSIONS...Part career memoir and part meditation on what it's like to be a single woman of lingering glamour, enduring vitality and advancing age...The book has the Bacall voice behind it. Her writing echoes her deep, sardonic, no-nonsense timbre and jazzy tempo....Bacall is at her best when talking about friends she has loved and watched die. Bernstein, she says, was more than a little seductive; Huston, more than a little remote; Olivier, a survivor to the end."
--Chicago Sun-Times
"HER PROSE IS SPARE AND HONEST....A kaleidoscope of thoughts and ideas on loneliness, aging, and above all, surviving...There are also poignant reminiscences of the golden years of Hollywood and many of its leading creators."
--The Washington Post Book World
"SHE REMINDS US OF SOME FAMILIAR TRUTHS WORTH ATTENDING TO. . . .What she's writing about, Ms. Bacall explains, is 'life' and indeed her musings about getting older, about intimations of mortality, about living solo, about letting go of one's children will resonate with women who, like her, are of a certain age."
--The New York Times Book Review
"ENGROSSING. . .POIGNANT."
--People


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As Bacall tells readers right up front, this is not a chronological autobiography in the manner of her earlier "By Myself" (1985), nor is it a sequel. Rather, this smallish book offers an anecdotal look back at the last 15 years of Bacall's life, in which she is mostly concerned with work, friends, family, and home. Though Bacall is as frank and charming a raconteur as ever, she doesn't have that much material to work with here. Her stories about refurbishing a house or the ups and downs of life with her children are more noteworthy for the way she tells them than for what she's saying. Most interesting are Bacall's musings on what she wants life to be like for her now, and how, after so many years alone, she is once again ready for love. It is certainly refreshing to see an older woman portrayed (if only by herself) as seasoned yet vital, still questioning, and still questing. This is a Book-of-the-Month Club selection with a 200,000 printing, so expect plenty of demand.


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