The Great Peace

August 2, 2021
In this haunting debut, actor Suvari—best known for her roles in American Beauty, and American Pie—chronicles her life and rise in Hollywood, and opens up for the first time about being sexually abused. She traces how her seemingly idyllic childhood in the 1980s in Rhode Island crumbled as her parents faced financial trouble and the family moved to South Carolina. There, she started middle school and was groomed into an inappropriate sexual relationship by her older brother's friend. In frank and searing prose, Suvari illustrates how this violation sent her into a tailspin, even as her acting career took off at age 13 and she moved to Los Angeles. "I gravitated toward men who took advantage of my vulnerability and confusion," she writes. "A photographer. A manager. A lighting engineer." Time and again she found herself in toxic relationships—including two marriages she deems "ill-conceived escapes"—and numbed herself with drugs, all the while clinching leading roles and trying to find her footing in the limelight. Suvari writes that until now, "this life of mine was... my secret world of shame." While the experiences she details are devastating, her ability to weave them into a narrative of empowerment is what makes this so moving. In bringing her struggles to light, Suvari reclaims her story and will surely inspire others to do the same.

July 1, 2021

Actress Suvari (American Beauty; Six Feet Under) lays herself bare in this fearless and forthright memoir. Born in 1979, Suvari spent her early days in a palatial estate in Newport, RI, with her parents and older brothers. As a precocious child, she excelled in school but stumbled socially. Her memoir details with courage and candor the sexual and emotional abuse she suffered at the age of 12, a trauma that led her to self-medicate with marijuana and other drugs. After several moves, her family settled in Los Angeles so that Suvari could focus on acting and modeling. As she endured a series of abusive relationships and a growing drug addiction, Suvari found ways to access her emotional turmoil in the roles she played. This memoir chronicles the confusion, extravagance, and loneliness of her life in Hollywood. Using the wisdom that she's gathered from excruciating breakups, near-death experiences, the loss of a parent, and more, Suvari proves to be an exceptionally strong narrator whose memoir will offer solace and companionship to readers who might feel isolated and alone. VERDICT An honest and unadorned Hollywood confessional that casts a light on the darkness behind the scenes.--Megan Duffy, Glen Ridge P.L., NJ

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 15, 2021
In her powerful debut memoir, the actor demonstrates both candor and storytelling skill. Suvari is stunningly straightforward about how she survived--and even flourished--despite years of sexual and emotional abuse. There will be tabloid interest in The Great Peace, named for "a book of poetry and stories" she wrote as an escape from her troubled teenage years, but this is much more than a celebrity tell-all. The author unflinchingly reveals that she was raped at age 12 by a childhood friend, discusses her suicide attempt, and examines her numerous questionable relationships with older men as she started her career as a young actor. Though Suvari doesn't include anything about the sexual harassment allegations against her American Beauty co-star Kevin Spacey, she does tell a story about an unusual ploy Spacey used to prepare for a pivotal scene in the movie. The author also frankly explores the problems with her previous two marriages even though they are not always flattering for her. As an award-winning veteran actor, Suvari is already known as a masterful visual storyteller, and the craftsmanship she exhibits here is impressive. "It was too hard to verbalize some of my traumas, even to my therapist....Those memories were like walls that kept me from escaping," she writes about her first real experience in therapy. "I had become too used to pretending I was okay." Each bite-sized chapter skillfully builds on the experiences of the previous one while foreshadowing what is to come, creating a page-turner that propels the streamlined narrative forward. Even when, in the story, Suvari seems stuck in a destructive relationship, she offers enough hints that suggest she'll make it out. How she does it is a rewarding journey worth taking. "I want [the book] to serve as the flickering light at the end of a dark road showing there is a way out," she writes in the author's note. "And there is." Suvari's bracing tale of abusive patterns and building new beginnings is wrenching, potent, and ultimately inspirational.

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July 27, 2021
Going through a storage unit in preparation for a recent move, actress Suvari came across one of her teenage diaries and was surprised to find a note in the back--her suicide note, she soon realized, and one she didn't even remember writing. The story of that girl, what pushed her to that desperation, and how she eventually sought and found healing in her adulthood is the journey of this memoir, Suvari's first book. After an idyllic childhood spent rambling through her family's Newport, Rhode Island estate, Suvari steadily lost support and stability as her family moved and she changed schools. She was sexually assaulted and repeatedly abused at age 12 by a friend of her older brother. When her career began just years later, she experienced similar abuse by her first manager before falling into an abusive, toxic, and humiliating relationship that lasted years. During this time, in which she starred in films like American Pie and American Beauty, she was miserable, keeping her personal life hidden, and relying on drugs and alcohol to cope. Interspersed among the book's short chapters, which are written in a detailed, matter-of-fact style with cliff-hanger endings, are Suvari's poems, some of which date back to her teen years. Readers seeking more celebrity truth telling and survivor stories in the wake of #MeToo will find a harrowing, often painful story of the all-too-prevalent ways young women are preyed upon, and the work it takes to find hope and healing.

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