cover image Journey: A Personal Odyssey

Journey: A Personal Odyssey

Marsha Mason. Simon & Schuster, $25 (336pp) ISBN 978-0-684-81524-4

There are two journeys in Mason's emotionally raw and revealing autobiography. Framing the actress's life story is her physical move away from Los Angeles and from her stalled Hollywood career to Santa Fe, where she goes to make peace with herself in 1993, with the help of the ""Two Garys"" (her first husband and his longtime lover). During the move, she sifts through her life with nonlinear flashbacks in what amounts to a second, inner journey. Disconnected from her violent and alcoholic parents, Mason moved to New York City at an early age to act on stage. Her first marriage, to Gary, at 23, lasted five years. Her second marriage proved somewhat more lasting. In 1973, 22 days after auditioning for Neil Simon's The Good Doctor, she and the playwright married. Simon had lost his first wife of 20 years to cancer only three months before; his unresolved grief would haunt the marriage. Shortly after their wedding, Simon told Mason he didn't want to be married to an actress, so, with a rising career and one Oscar nomination (Cinderella Liberty) under her belt, Mason gave notice on the opening night of Richard III and didn't work until Simon wrote 1977's The Goodbye Girl for her. Her complicated, loving but hurtful and frustrating eight-year marriage to Simon is the most fascinating part of her memoir. However, Mason's piecemeal recollections can be exasperating, forcing readers to wait for more details before a complete picture forms. With years of therapy behind her, Mason demonstrates a keen sense of her own conflicting inner voices, but the pace is slowed by the extensive dialogue she attributes to each of these 12 selves (e.g., Anna, her inner child; G.A., her guardian angel). This is a heartfelt and self-effacing biography of dysfunction and recovery, not a movie star memoir--but fans will find Mason's soul-searching fascinating and her hard-earned happy ending a just reward. Agent, Esther Newberg, ICM. (Oct.)