Prairie Tale: A Memoir [Paperback]

 

 

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Reason for Reading: I enjoy reading actor's memoirs from my childhood back to the days of the silver screen and I am a huge Little House on the Prairie fan.

Comments: Melissa writes of her life from early days up to the present time. She explains her adoptive origins and goes on to give a brief synopsis of her adoptive parents' background. Then she quickly moves onto her career which started at an early age and is really all she's ever known. Her mother was a typical backstage mother and Gilbert has gone through a long healing process to reach the place today where she and her mother are friends. Her life was very interesting and while Gilbert was a TV Star she was the same age as the famous Brat Pack and was a behind-the-scenes member as Rob Lowe's girlfriend and then fiance during that time of the eighties. There is plenty of name-dropping. She had a famous Uncle who wrote for Hollywood & television in the 40s and 50s making her accessible to some of the greats such as Frank Sinatra and Milton Berle. Also her years on Little House introduced her to many of Hollywood's elite as they appeared as guest stars over the years.

Melissa specifically concentrates on the frenzied life of a child actor, her unhealthy relationship with Rob Lowe, her first marriage and her current marriage. All of which she does not hold back with the details. She also spends much time talking about Michael Landon, her experiences with him, her feelings for him and his role in her life. She also deals with her years of drug use, though she never seems to have hit bottom with that as an addiction. It was later in life that alcohol became her addiction that made her hit bottom and sent her to recovery to become sober. These and many other topics make up the whole of this book. Melissa Gilbert lead an interesting life and accomplished a lot more with her career than I hardly knew about.

What disappoints me about these memoirs is the lack of things which I was expecting. With a title such as Prairie Tales, I was hoping for a real in depth look, behind the scenes look, at her life growing up on the set of Little House on the Prairie. Yes, she does spend quite some time on those years of her life, but the Little House memories are brief and not in depth enough. Mostly Melissa spends these years telling the reader what TV movie she worked on during each summer hiatus of the show. Many actors of the show are never mentioned, others get a brief one-liner. As far as Melissa Sue Anderson is concerned it is pretty clear from Gilbert's three short references that she took the "if you have nothing nice to say then don't say anything at all" approach. She does mention her friendship with the actress who played Nellie Olson more than anything else. But all in all it was quite disappointing from a Little House on the Prairie point of view.

Melissa also holds back on talking about her siblings. She continuously says how much her sister Sara (from Roseanne) means to her, how much she makes an impact in her life and yet as far as the memoir goes they never do a single thing together. There are no memories of anything the two did together whatsoever. Sara is simply a name in the book. If you don't already know who Sara Gilbert is, this book will make you no wiser. Her brother, Jonathan, who played Willie Olson on Little House, is barely referred to during those years in the book. I had expected to hear what it was like to work with your brother. Then at some time in the book Gilbert blurts out that she must mention that when he turned 18 he withdrew his money, packed up and left and never came back, the end, and she's fine with that. Huh? I also must mention that the swearing was rather off-putting as well; I'm just not comfortable with swearing in a narrative.

All in all I think Melissa glossed over the Little House years and then decided to talk about what she wanted to tell her fans (that she had a career outside of the show) rather than what her fans would have wanted to know about. Which is, to say the least, disappointing. But now that I've said all that, none of it means that this book is not good or not worth reading if you want to know about Melissa Gilbert, the person. She comes across as a nice, caring person. She currently works with children's hospice. She is not full of herself and tells a pretty much down to earth story of a girl growing up in the media spotlight. She grows from a naive girl overprotected by everyone to a teenager/young adult who gets in over her head to, finally, a mature woman who can take care of herself. Go ahead and read the book if it interests you, just don't expect to meet all your Little House on the Prairie friends between its pages.

I was very impressed when I got this book and quickly fell into the life of Melissa Gilbert. Fairy dust aside, it's a good look at her life, without too much dishing, dissing and disguising. I could hear her in my head as I read the book.

This is not a trash piece. It's well written, well thought out, and honest about the less perfect aspects of life as "Half Pint".

..."You're just a country writer" or "*It must be very hard tracing all your relatives. Names and everything. Have to spend all that time in the forest or wherever it is you're from." (actual Little House dialogue)

I was disappointed that there wasn't more of a behind-the-scenes look about the good-old-fashioned Little House series. Some of the cast wasn't even mentioned. Yet, Melissa felt a need to write about how Warren Beatty showed a lot of good-old-fashioned lust when looking at her comely teenage behind.

I didn't finish the book - chose to put it down at its best moment of profundity: her last visit with Michael Landon.

I was expecting a lot more, Half Pint.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Very Well Written
This book was very well written. It had a very serious, mature, solid tone about it. I thought Melissa Gilbert shared very well about her life. Read more

Published 6 months ago by Lori G

2.0 out of 5 stars Not what I thought.....
Growing up watching Little House on the Prairie, I was hoping
the book would detail more of the show and interactions with each character
worked with. Read more

Published 16 months ago by Lisa

3.0 out of 5 stars Expected more
Not a bad book , but with a title like "Prairie Tale" I expected a little more info regarding "Little House on the prairie" and less of her endless bad choices. Read more

Published on Mar 29 2010 by Zira691

4.0 out of 5 stars For all Little House on the Prairie Fans
Drinking? Illegal drugs? Plastic surgery? Everything I never knew and never would have *guessed* about the woman who play Laura Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie. Read more

Published on Sep 7 2009 by Vanessa Menor

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed reader
This was a prime example of an "over share" Do her ex lovers and her children want the general public to know the gritty details of her many escapades? Read more

Published on Sep 1 2009 by M. Burkholder

4.0 out of 5 stars She told her story without telling everybody elses secrets!
You gotta give her credit. She only wrote about HER life and tried to stay away from dishing dirt on the people around her. I admire her for that. Read more

Published on Aug 10 2009 by Knitting Novice

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