Starred review from August 23, 2021
Stage, screen, and cabaret star Foster dazzles with this deeply personal debut told largely through crafts ranging from baby blankets to bonbon recipes. After the actor encountered mean girls at age 19 on her first national theater tour—as the understudy for Marty, Rizzo, and Sandy in Grease—she took up cross-stitching as a way to cope. “I call it my gateway craft,” she writes, noting how generations of women in her family have expressed themselves in a similar fashion. The more she cross-stitched, Foster explains, “the less I cared what other people thought about me.” This revelation set her on a path to crafting her way through every production she’s ever starred in—from her Tony Award–winning performances on Broadway to her role on TV’s Younger (where she crocheted a pink dinosaur for her daughter). In prose both brutally honest and deeply empathetic, she writes of her struggle with panic attacks and of knitting, collaging, and baking as a way to ease anxiety about major life events—including a very public divorce—but also as a means to celebrate more joyous moments, such as adopting her daughter, Emily, and marrying her husband, screenwriter Ted Griffin. Those struggling with mental health or family problems will find this incredibly moving. Agent: Mollie Glick, CAA.
October 1, 2021
Tony Award-winning actress Foster writes an inspirational ode to crafting, in which the work that most defines her is somewhere inside her own homes. Framing her life as a "maker," Foster is a relatable narrator of her own journey to success, addressing familiar anxieties for women in the workplace and giving readers a peek behind the showbiz curtain. Pairing low stakes art with major life decisions, Foster's memoir is playful and optimistic, interjecting recipes, instructions, and interviews for the especially curious. With easygoing language, Sutton shares how she was drawn to the arts, especially acting and singing, and how the art of making has always been both a personal interest and a coping mechanism. For Sutton, this leads to dabbling in everything from cross-stitching and quilting to her personal favorite: crocheting. While her memoir sometimes jolts a bit out of sequence, the writing reflects her natural storytelling prowess and showcases the joy of finding a creative outlet and sharing creations with others. VERDICT Crafters and fans of Foster will enjoy this tender memoir about creative coping as a way to say yes to personal ambitions big and small.--Asa Drake, Marion County P.L., FL
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October 1, 2021
Fans know Foster as a Tony-award winning Broadway actor and as the star of the TV show Younger, but she is also an avid crafter. Here she delves into the stages of her performing and personal life and the craft projects that got her through them. She grew up with a complicated and increasingly agoraphobic mother who fostered a love of performing in Foster and her older brother. While on tour with the musical Grease, Foster taught herself cross stitch as a way to avoid mean girls in the cast, but she found her true craft calling when she learned to crochet while on vocal rest. Crocheted blankets then mark milestones in her life, one while going through a divorce, one while caring for her dying mother, one while starting the adoption process after failed fertility treatments. There are also plenty of details about her well-known Broadway and TV productions (including an interview with her idol, Patti LuPone) as well as a blanket pattern, making this a good fit for fans of performer's memoirs and crafters alike.
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October 15, 2021
A Tony Award-winning actor explores crafting as therapy. Foster's grounded, heartfelt, and family-focused memoir is rooted in the art projects she's been creating (and selling) since learning how to crochet at 19 during a 1995 national tour with Grease. Each creation has a purpose and is inspired by a specific significant moment. "These hobbies," she writes, "have literally preserved my sanity through some of the darkest periods of my life....My crafts have helped hold me together and given me a place to pour all of my love or sadness into." The author hails from a crafting family: Her mother, grandmother, and aunt all knitted, crocheted, and cross-stitched (what she calls her "gateway craft"), and she proudly carries on that tradition in handcrafting items for her adopted daughter as an expression of parental love and to foster a more creative connection. Foster also writes about how she and her brother were both groomed for musical theater groups and aggressively encouraged to perform. Despite garnering immense stage success on Broadway and TV (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Anything Goes, etc.), the author has struggled, like many of us, with anxiety and other mental health issues. Thankfully for Foster, she discovered the calming salve of crafting, which has given her a consistent, centering source of peace and sanity. Crocheted blankets helped her through a divorce and her mother's declining health, while colorful sketch work soothed her frustrating attempts to start a biological family with her second husband, screenwriter Ted Griffin. Throughout the narrative's delicately described episodes, Foster dispenses sage advice and shares cookie recipes, blanket instructions, and the story behind her "graphgan," which creatively fused her drawings with her crochet career. Foster's fans will delight in this inspiring story of the multitalented actor's heights and pitfalls, while crafters will discover newfound purpose, embedded meaning, and shared serendipity in their universal pastime. An intimate, moving mosaic of art and memoir.
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