This is not going to be an easy review. How can you truly review a book that is wholly contained with one of your favorite actors diary entry’s from most of his career to a month before the end of his life.
Let me start by saying that I almost did not finish this book. I don’t normally read biographies or autobiographies of any sort unless I have a deep connection, tie, or love for the person it is about. Alan Rickman has always fascinated me. You could always tell no matter what he played on in film, stage, or even interviews that he lived presently. He was always focused and he cared, so deeply about his work, or at least that was my version on how I saw him when I watched him act. I don’t know what I wanted to get out of reading his diaries. Maybe a better sense of who he was as a person off screen, to hear his thoughts, or to relive his work along side of him but to then only remember that he is no longer with us to grace us with his talents anymore.
I was heartbroken when I learned that he passed away. I had just turned 17, and while I couldn’t tell you where I was, I know that I cried. Then I proceeded to watch Harry Potter, Sweeney Todd, and Sense & Sensibility (Just a few of my favorite movies of his) until the tears would not come anymore.
Diaries are such a personal thing, you pour your heart into them, your mind. Sometimes they are there just so you can vent out your frustrations happening around you that you can’t actually voice. Sometimes they are for your remembrances to pass down to your children. Sometimes, all they are is an account of your day, short and sweet. What bothered me when starting the book was that in the introduction, Alan Taylor writes, “We do not know whether Alan would like to have seen his diaries published but he did receive invitations to write books which could have drawn upon the material in them.” I know that there is a possibility that Alan Rickman told someone that this is what he wanted, maybe his wife Rima, who I hope would know best. It gives me hope that is what he wanted given that she wrote an afterward for the book, which made me cry, and I will get to a bit later. On the other hand though, there is still that fear in the back of my head, that he did not agree to have these diaries published and his thoughts, feelings, frustrations, etc. are all out there for the world the see now and he can’t even speak on the content of them.
In my personal opinion, and I am aware that not everyone will share this opinion, I think they should have done this differently. Have friends, his dearest friends, people that knew him, write about their time together, and add in excerpts from his diaries that might give a small window of a perspective to how he felt during times that the writer might recount. Similar to what Emma did in the forward. It still gives Alan privacy, not giving away all that he wrote, while still celebrating his life and putting something tangible down for remembrance.
One last thing that bothered me, I am not sure if this was just me, but it felt morbid. It was a bit morbid reading his diaries, knowing what was about to happen. Watching the chapters or years of his life pass by on paper, reading the notes at the bottom tell us when he was told about the cancer, when he had to break the news to people close to him, when he went to the hospital. Knowing that the last entry of the diaries published would be his last entry and would soon pass away a little over a month later. It felt like him dying all over again.
Maybe that was the point… I give the product of the book itself, a 3 out of 5 stars.
As far as content goes, Alan Rickman seemed to have a talent for writing just as he had a talent for acting. Even in his diary, for his eyes alone, he spoke eloquently. He had poise and it was like butter reading the entries. You could tell where his frustrations lied, but he was not afraid to open up about them so that doesn’t surprise me. Each of the deaths that he recounts, I feel like it took a piece of him each time.
Throughout the diaries it didn’t seem like the man slept. He was always on the go, out, up and about. It seemed that while he liked having his thoughts, he loved to be around people. Maybe that was just the lifestyle that he was in, but who knows. Reading in such a short span his experiences with certain actors and on certain sets was surreal.
I thought that Emma Thompsons forward for Alan was beautiful. It made you remember from the start that Alan had a way of just captivating people by doing so little. She gave the readers a sense of Alan personally before diving into the diaries which I think was needed. If readers just went right into the diaries because all they (including myself) knew of him was a few movies, I think the outcome would have been a lot different.
Rima’s afterward was the icing on the cake. It was bleeding and beautiful and you knew the love she held for him hung on every word. Like I said earlier it felt like he was dying all over again and I think her afterward made that feeling even more real. I was sobbing while reading it and had to take some time after to mourn and remember.
The content itself is more than a 5 out of a 5. If you are looking for advice on whether or not you should read this, then I am sorry but I can’t give you that. That is something you will have to decide for yourself on this one.
Cracked Open 