Absolutely Now!: A Futurist's Journey to her Inner Truth - Hardcover

Franks, Lynne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0879518596 ISBN 13: 9780879518592

Publisher: Overlook Books, 1998

Synopsis

Lynne Franks is a legendary figure in international fashion and public relations and the inspiration for the outrageous and driven character of Edina on the cult television series "Absolutely Fabulous." Yet at the pinnacle of her success, after building a world class public relations firm, she abruptly sold her company and reclaimed her life, embarking on a quest for meaning that took her around the globe.
Lynne Franks's journey took her to the United Nations Women's Conference in Beijing; a holy mountain in India; the sacred Celtic sites of Ireland. Scotland, and Wales; the Californian Redwoods; and trance dancing to African drums. She addressed conferences on ethical business and spent time with many of the world's spiritual leaders, leading environmentalists, and visionaries. This book recounts that journey.

About this title

About the Author:

Lynne Franks is the creator of Globalfusion, a virtual partnership network aimed at training and empowering with regard to sustainable enterprise. She divides her time between Los Angeles and London.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Franks, the public-relations entrepreneur whose driven personality inspired the character Edwina on the TV comedy Absolutely Fabulous, contributes to a growing New Age genre: the Disillusioned Successful Womans Memoir. By the time she was 30, Franks had founded her own stunningly successful PR firm--and made it the best-known in the UK. Her agency is, at least in part, responsible for such omnipresent cultural detritus as the Spice Girls and Tommy Hilfiger. But after years in PR, she burned out--not only on the 20-hour days, but on the moral and spiritual emptiness of the work itself. Her marriage also fell apart, and she began to realize that all her adult life she had used work to avoid intimacy. She sold one of her enormous homes, and eventually her firm. Franks's quest for spiritual truth occupies a large part of the book and takes her all over the worldto an ecological community in Findhorn, Scotland, to sacred Celtic sites in Ireland and Wales, to India to worship with the Brahma Kamaris, and finally to Israel to confront her Jewish roots. Her musings on spirituality are not informativeand it's hard to take such a wealthy person's renunciation of materialism seriously, when her spiritual quest, involving as it does all this travel, sounds even more expensive than her '80s party lifestyle. Her political activism is impressiveFranks organized Britain's What Women Want festival, and traveled to Beijing for the UN Women's Conference, among other projectsbut neither her analysis nor her description of any of it runs especially deep. The account of her work with the socially responsible business community (companies like the Body Shop and such organizations as Social Venture Network) unfortunately gets short shrift. Despite having been immortalized with such glorious absurdity on TV, Franks still doesn't seem entirely aware of how silly she can appear. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Overlook Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0879518596
• ISBN 13: 9780879518592
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256