Knee Deep in Paradise

The star of the popular ABC-TV series Grace Under Fire recounts her childhood in the South as the daughter of an absent, alcoholic father, her experience with domestic abuse, and her start as a comedienne.

"You know you've lived a hell of a life when stardom is anticlimactic," declares Butler, star of Grace Under Fire, in this candid, bittersweet memoir, which she began writing years before she became famous. Aphoristic, melancholy and ultimately triumphant, it sometimes reads like a great country song. Her father, eccentric and imperious, abandoned the family when Brett was four; only after he died did adult Brett discover they shared a maverick sensibility. Books, comedy and a supportive bohemian (if depressive) mother helped Brett weather a gothic Southern childhood. As a teenager, though, she escaped with drink, drugs and sex; at 20 she married a man who began beating her the day after their wedding. Three years later, she ditched her husband in Georgia and discovered stand-up comedy in Houston, finally channeling her creativity and tendency to excess. Moving to New York City, she advanced her comedy career as she discovered sobriety, a lasting love and a grounded sense of herself. Since this memoir concerns only Butler's pre-Hollywood life, fans may be disappointed that she doesn't discuss her show, dish Tinseltown or confess to her recent plastic surgery. But her book is rich enough without that. Photos not seen by PW. $500,000 ad/promo; first serial to People; author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

``Most women like you, with a past like yours, would have ended up as a clerk at Woolworth's,'' a therapist once told Butler, the stand-up comic and star of the televison show Grace Under Fire. And while Butler was understandably outraged, it's easy to see what that astonished analyst meant. This tell-all-and-then-tell-some- more memoir stands out in its genre both for its frankness and for the awfulness of Butler's early life. Her father, an alcoholic, disappeared early. Butler grew up fast, living with her mother and four sisters in a succession of southern towns. She sampled drugs and started using alcohol as an adolescent, tried college and gave up, then slipped into an abusive marriage. She's unsparing in describing the duplicities of the alcoholic, but curiously, she's less persuasive in talking about how comedy helped her tap into something essential and restorative, or in probing the sources of her creativity. By contrast with what's come before, her descriptions of her growing success (the book ends before the launching of her series) seem flat and rushed, cluttered with names. Still, a better-than-average entry in the genre, best for its vividly rendered early scenes. (b&w photos, not seen) (First serial to People; $500,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.