AFTER THE FALL: How I Picked Myself Up, Dusted Myself Off, and Started All Over Again by Suzanne Somers

PUBLISHER: Crown, 4/1998
GENRE: Nonfiction/Memoir
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: B

FROM PUBLISHER: With her usual candor, Suzanne Somers takes us inside the rehearsal hall of Three's Company and gives listeners a never-before-heard version of the jealousy, back-stubbing, and greed that accompany a hit TV show, and the part Somers played in her professional demise. As the lovable Chrissy Snow, Somers became the toast of Hollywood, with all its glittery perks. Yet all was not perfect, she confesses. Her relationship with her husband, the love of a lifetime, was being sorely tested as they blended their families together and were forced to deal with their children's anger and resentment. When asking for a raise caused Somers to be dumped from Three's Company the once-welcoming doors to the most powerful offices in Hollywood slammed shut and she was unofficially blackballed from television for the better part of the next decade.

In this insightful memoir, Somers tells all, from the heady days of stardom, to her fall from grace and the grief that followed, to her eventual resurrection as an entrepreneur, as a bestselling author, and, once again, as a beloved TV star. Every listener who's ever experienced loss or felt a great opportunity slip through his or her fingers can relate to Somers's story of how she fought back and won control over her own destiny.

MY THOUGHTS: I enjoyed this though it wasn't as good as her first memoir, Keeping Secrets. If you haven't read that one, this one will be slightly confusing as she doesn't give a whole lot of detail about her past since that was covered in great detail ten years before in Keeping Secrets. This one was mostly about her relationships with her stepchildren and her husband's dislike of her son, which seems to have stemmed from jealousy. She discusses the work she's done since Three's Company, both theater and television. It was well-written and honest, painfully so. I must say I don't like Alan one bit and feel he's reaped the benefits of her success the whole time he's known her. I don't feel she ever had to start all over again because during Three's Company she did some television movies and headlined her own show and once Three's Company was over for her she just continued on with the same stuff.

I like Suzanne a lot and believe her 100% regarding what she had to say about being fired from Three's Company in 1980. She has nothing at all to gain by lying. She seems like a genuinely nice, caring person with a good heart who's put up with an overbearing husband for most of her adult life.

It would be nice if both her memoirs were reissued, especially this one, with an update since this is nineteen years old.

There's a book from 1998, published just a few months after this one, called Come and Knock on Our Door, about Three's Company that I'd like to read one day when the price drops. I'm a big fan of the show and though it was good after she left, it just wasn't the same. EDIT: I read the book I mentioned in the summer of 2017 and it was very good, 4-stars.