Readers will have no complaints with Sharon Gless's bawdy, blisteringly candid and no-holds-barred memoir that grips from the first page to the last. "The one consistent love of my life has always been my acting career," writes Gless, who learned her craft for more than a decade as the last contract player at Universal Studios. In 1982, after twice turning down the co-lead role in Cagney and Lacey, she relented and joined Tyne Daly in the iconic police drama, which earned her two Emmy awards, a Golden Globe and legions of fans. During the series' seventh season, she began an affair with the show's producer, Barney Rosenzweig, and checked herself into rehab for two months after decades of blackout drinking.
Gless recalls being sent to a Jesuit university at 19: "Within three months I had become a weekend drunk and was having an affair with a married man." Gless writes with sardonic humor and fearless honesty about her alcohol addiction and decade-long relapse after 15 years sober. She also chronicles her battles with weight and self-esteem. She married Rosenzweig in 1991, and she's open about their marital struggles, decades of therapy and near-divorce.
Apparently There Were Complaints offers rollicking show-biz anecdotes (a date with Steven Spielberg) and times when she was "sucked into a haze of booze and cocaine.... Hey, it was the '80s." Gless also writes affectionately of working on Queer as Folk, Burn Notice and Nip Tuck. Gless may remind some of Carrie Fisher, but she has her own tart-tongued, funny, endearingly original and brave voice. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant