As much as a memoir of ten terrible
months, the book is a tribute to a remarkable marriage and will move the reader
to both tears and laughter. (Review by Margaret von Klemperer, courtesy of The
Witness)
Celeb memoir, with its pages of dropped names and breathless gush is a genre I normally avoid like the plague. However, I had heard good things about A Pocketful of Happiness, and decided to give it a go. And I’m very glad I did.
The dropped names and the gush are there, but the Swaziland-born Withnail and I and Can You Ever Forgive Me actor combines them with a profoundly moving description of the last 10 months of the life of his wife of many years, Joan Washington. Diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in December 2020, Washington, a celebrated voice coach, lived until September 2021 in the devoted care of her husband and daughter.
It would be an almost unbearably gruelling read were it not for the name dropping and digressions into the couple’s past. And it’s an illustrious past in the world of entertainment, with some very impressive names being dropped. Nigella Lawson cooks meals and sends them round; Prince (now King) Charles pops in with flowers from his Highgrove garden; Barbra Streisand messages (Grant is a weirdly obsessive superfan of hers); Gabriel Byrne visits. It could easily all be a bit overwhelming for the reader, but the construction of the book is clever, using all this as relief from what would otherwise be the devastating sadness of what Grant and Washington are going through as her health declines and the end approaches.
The digressions are often very funny, and Grant can be exceedingly self-deprecating. He covers the early days of the couple’s relationship, work on many of the movies he has featured in and, very entertainingly, the circus that surrounded his Oscar nomination in 2019. He and Washington seem to have had a remarkable relationship – she hated the Hollywood razzmatazz, which he relished, and she chose not to go to America for the Oscars. One might have thought it would be a difficult thing for Grant to accept, but it was not. As much as a memoir of ten terrible months, the book is a tribute to a remarkable marriage and will move the reader to both tears and laughter. - Margaret von Klemperer
A Pocketful of Happiness is published by Gallery Books. Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-3985-2011
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