Born with Teeth

I, as so many others, learned to know Kate as Captain Janeway. She talks about that in this book, but it's mostly what happens before Star Trek. I listened to the audiobook she narrates herself. There's some unevenness in the telling, but all in all, it's a good book.

Interesting, But Flaky. In this memoir, Kate Mulgrew - known best, depending on age and interest, for 70s era show Ryan's Hope, 90s era show Star Trek: Voyager, or 2010s era show Orange Is The New Black - describes her life from being literally born with teeth up until around the turn of the Millenium, when she was still filming Voyager.

And she does a remarkable job of keeping the reader interested in what happens next. Her prose has the qualities of the poet she once wanted to be.

But she plays with the timeline too much, often skipping around or losing threads entirely, only to pick them up later with no explanation. And what she makes seem in the book as merely days in some cases appears to have actually been years.

But the biggest sin, and the reason this 2015 memoir feels incomplete, is the abrupt ending. Wherein she sets up a particular meeting that had been years in the making... and then ends with a literal closed door, never revealing anything beyond the moment she stepped into that particular room.

Interesting enough to kick off a new annual Book Riot challenge (“Read a celebrity memoir”) and now I want to watch Star Trek: Voyager.

A generous 3 stars. Her writing style matches her interview style which I find overly dramatic and effusive. This also ended earlier than I expected, I'm pretty sure she'd divorced Tim Hagan when this came out so it must have taken a while to publish

An easy romp into the life of Kate Mulgrew up to her mid-Voyager days. Her story isn't always sunshine and roses, her lifestyle (actress in theater and television) not one I can necessarily relate to, but enjoyable nonetheless.

Listened to the audiobook, which was narrated by the author.

Kate Mulgrew is an excellent writer, and a great narrator. She really performs the story more than just reads it. It covers her early career up through the time she spent working on Star Trek Voyager, and even though I didn't know much about her career, I was fascinated by her story.

The most touching parts of Born With Teeth are the ones with her children and her sister. The most interesting are the occasional insights into her acting career, stage and television both. Unfortunately the bulk of the book is coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, and failed relationships with men. The relationships are described with little affection, since they are told with hindsight of every red flag and failing. The book isn't completely linear, which is frustrating at times.

If you're considering this book as a Star Trek fan, you can skip ahead to around chapter 25. Her time on Voyager isn't described in great detail but it's reasonably satisfying. If you want anything related to Orange Is The New Black, tough luck because the book ends at least a decade before that series began.

I was both impressed and disappointed in this book.
Kate Mulgrew is a better writer than I was expecting - her prose is lyrical and enthralling. I found it difficult to put this book down, which is why I gave it 3 instead of 2 stars.

Regarding content...as an actress, I can't say it's all that surprising to find that she's very flamboyant and dramatic in the telling of her life as well as the living of it, but even when she was obviously writing from her heart, I found it difficult to find the authentic in it. Her passions run hot and fleeting, at the expense of almost any other thing in her life except her acting. She didn't appear to struggle at all in the acting business. She hadn't even finished acting school when she was cast simultaneously in two major parts on tv and the stage, and from there, her obvious acting chops and professionalism were always recognized. Except for that one time she botched her audition for the captain of a starship, after which she said something to the effect of “that was a terrible audition and I apologize, but as you can see I am a woman in love and very distracted” - and the love she speaks of there, that was the real love, the one that made her realize all the other loves were fake loves, for whom she dumped her two young children with a local teen for the day to go fishing (it was pouring rain) and hang out in the pub until she got back from driving for two hours to meet him at a hotel with a closed bar. When she got back her children were angry with her for leaving them for so long, so she bought them things to make it up to them. Her love for her children is actually pretty obvious, but her passion and spontaneity mean that she neglects them. Not even for work - if it was just that, I would have sympathy because she needs to work and acting requires long hours - but for passionate loves and wild adventures. I think she loves loving and being loved, but the mundane every day of cultivating and maintaining it bores her. She speaks frankly and (as always) passionately about the daughter she gave up for adoption, but less so about the sons she raised. She speaks of meeting her daughter for the first time as being a wonderful and heartwarming experience, and it was beautifully written. She thanks her sons in the book's acknowledgements, and then extra-thanks her daughter. Having never been pregnant let alone either raised a child or given one up for adoption, I can only guess at how it must feel, but how must her sons feel as she continually left them in the hands of the nanny or babysitter or their father to work and play, all the while pining after the daughter she gave up.

In all - I love her work, she's a talented actress, passionate about life, and I would love to drink with her one day, but I don't think we could be friends.