The Rainbow Comes and Goes
A Mother and Son On Life, Love, and Loss
Ratings5
Average rating4.4
15
A Mother and Son On Life, Love, and Loss
Ratings5
Average rating4.4
#1 New York Times Bestseller A touching and intimate correspondence between Anderson Cooper and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, offering timeless wisdom and a revealing glimpse into their lives Though Anderson Cooper has always considered himself close to his mother, his intensely busy career as a journalist for CNN and CBS affords him little time to spend with her. After she suffers a brief but serious illness at the age of ninety-one, they resolve to change their relationship by beginning a year-long conversation unlike any they had ever had before. The result is a correspondence of surprising honesty and depth in which they discuss their lives, the things that matter to them, and what they still want to learn about each other. Both a son’s love letter to his mother and an unconventional mom’s life lessons for her grown son, The Rainbow Comes and Goes offers a rare window into their close relationship and fascinating life stories, including their tragedies and triumphs. In these often humorous and moving exchanges, they share their most private thoughts and the hard-earned truths they’ve learned along the way. In their words their distinctive personalities shine through—Anderson’s journalistic outlook on the world is a sharp contrast to his mother’s idealism and unwavering optimism. An appealing memoir with inspirational advice, The Rainbow Comes and Goes is a beautiful and affectionate celebration of the universal bond between a parent and a child, and a thoughtful reflection on life, reminding us of the precious insight that remains to be shared, no matter our age.
Reviews with the most likes.
More about Gloria than Anderson. Also, Anderson is very much the interviewer, he's fairly direct and usually makes declarative sentences. He sound like he's reading from index cards or a teleprompter.
I finally finished this book after reading it for two months. I ended up listening to most of this book on audiobook because of my eye surgery recovery but that was perfect because it is read by Anderson and Gloria themselves.
This book was an amazing foray into Anderson but also Gloria's life. This book is told back and forth between Anderson and his mother in the form of emails. While it is back and forth between the two it it still feels very much like you are reading a novel. I loved reading about various aspects of both of their lives and I loved how personal this book felt. This book was truly about a mother and a son and their relationship.
Too tired to write a review tonight. I really enjoyed this book. Enough that I am going to look up others by these authors. Thank goodness for book club..I would NOT have chosen this myself.
“We're all prophets when we have the benefit of looking backwards.” This is a quote I heard in an audio drama podcast (called 1865) a few weeks ago, and it's just stuck with me since. It's kind of a rephrasing of the title of this book “The rainbow comes and goes.” There are bright days and there are dark days, and sometimes we just have to accept that in order to keep going.
I didn't know much about Anderson Cooper (other than he's a hot silver fox on the news) or his mother Gloria Vanderbilt before reading this. It's structure is based off of emails the two shared over the course of year in order to understand each other more. Throughout the book Anderson Cooper asks questions, Gloria Vanderbilt responds, and if necessary Cooper provides context for the response before following up or asking a new question. It's a structure that I think could get stale if I read it from cover-to-cover in a few days, but this was a book I read over an extended period of time. Whenever I needed a break from schoolwork, I'd read through a couple Q&A sections before picking my work back up.
Overall, I think the insights and experiences shared were interesting, but I do wish that Cooper and Vanderbilt would have acknowledged the extent to which their familial social capital and privilege allowed them to do what they each did with their lives. They lead abnormal lives, not everybody goes out to dinner parties with the who's who of Elite Society on the regular. Obviously, if you're reading an autobiography/memoir of two celebrities, I guess that's sort of an implicit element of the story but I would have appreciated the explicit nod to the extraordinary elements of their lives.
