The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss by Anderson Cooper (Epub)

Description

A charming and intimate collection of correspondence between #1 New York Times bestselling author Anderson Cooper and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, that offers timeless wisdom and a revealing glimpse into their lives.

Anderson Cooper’s intensely busy career as a journalist for CNN and CBS’ 60 Minutes affords him little time to spend with his ninety-one year old mother. After she briefly fell ill, he and Gloria began a conversation through e-mail unlike any they had ever had before—a correspondence of surprising honesty and depth in which they discussed 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 in her final years and an unconventional mother’s life lessons for her grown son, The Rainbow Comes and Goes offers a rare window into their close relationship and fascinating lives. In these often hilarious and touching exchanges, they share their most private thoughts and the hard-earned truths they’ve learned along the way. Throughout, their distinctive personalities shine through—Anderson’s darker outlook on the world is a brilliant contrast to his mother’s idealism and unwavering optimism.

An appealing blend of memoir and inspirational advice, The Rainbow Comes and Goes is a beautiful and affectionate celebration of the profound and universal bond between a parent and child, and, like Tuesdays with Morrie, a thoughtful reflection on life and love, reminding us of the precious knowledge and insight that remains to be shared, no matter what age we are.

User’s Reviews

Review “Intriguing… an ideal Mother’s/Father’s Day gift, with the opening, ‘Let’s get to know each other better’…Affectionate, heartfelt, inspirational, and sometimes hilarious, the book’s message is that it is never too late to cultivate a new relationship with your family and break down those walls of silence.” — Bay Area Reporter“A beautiful book that will resonate for all generations, especially mothers and their sons . . . riveting, touching, dishy, funny, and surprising.” — Andy Cohen“Fascinating, forthright, philosophical, and inspiring, these mother-and-son musings on family, life, death, forgiveness, fame, and perseverance are at once uniquely personal and deeply human.” — Booklist (starred review)“[A] touching story. . . . Through greater openness, Cooper and Vanderbilt achieve a new closeness, demonstrating in this intimate and lively read that it’s never too late to have a rich relationship with family.” — Publishers Weekly“A layered mix of reminiscences, heart-rending revelations and apologia, all captured with unsparing candor. . . . Rainbows may in fact come and go, but this revealing take on the forces that shaped two dynamic lives promises to have real staying power.” — AARP Magazine“A remarkably frank and tender undertaking.” — New York Times“Meaningful, revealing…” — Wall Street Journal“This is a book like no other I have ever read…if any two people have lived through way more than their share of crises, singly and collectively, it is Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt. Their brave engagement with what they confront so staunchly in this extraordinary dialogue leaves me quite simply awestruck.” — Washington Times“Memoir readers (and Hollywood fans) will appreciate this book, especially those interested in relationships between mothers and sons. A perfect Mother’s Day read.” — Library Journal“Entertaining and thoughtful moments exchanged between a mother and son who have spent much of their lives in the spotlight.” — Kirkus Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ Hoped this would be a good sentimental read. I do like AC very much. But the mother!!! Wow, like most people have not had to deal with hard childhoods, tragedy, etc. Half way through I was rolling my eyes at her total lack of common sense and ridiculous “excuses” for her really poor decisions due to her past. Shallow silly woman that had people bailing her out her whole life, then, like her beloved Dodo, she lets them fall through the cracks. Cold hearted, I think much like her mother was. The book is not good, and I really now do not like GV at all! Sorry Anderson. The book was also cheaply put together. Glad I got it at a discount price.

⭐ Interesting premise for the book — an interview conducted over the span of a year by Anderson Cooper with his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt.I thought that the strongest part of the book was the life of Gloria from the time she was born until her first marriage. Considering that she had a childhood and teen years that were bereft of actual “family” — as in — a mother and father from whom she could receive love, care, guidance etc. it’s amazing that her later life wasn’t more messy than it was. It was definitely interesting to learn her feelings on the “trial of the century” and being known as the “poor little rich girl.” It was equally interesting and I thought, quite honest of her, to admit that when she grew older and attempted to “connect” with her mother that she found it impossible to do it because they literally did not know one another and could not find a way to discuss what had happened between them when the trial occurred and she was a child of ten caught in the middle of the situation between her mother and her aunt.I felt that the last section of the book was less compelling because it went away from actions and instead was more about philosophy of life, love etc on the part of Gloria. I thought that Anderson Cooper, too, was quite brave to step forward and speak about his own life considering that he is in the middle of living his life as a public figure on television whereas his mother is nearing the end of hers and it’s not as difficult to speak about painful experiences once they have passed as opposed to when you are younger and still facing them each day.Overall it is an interesting book and I think that both parties tried to be as honest as possible in their responses and comments.Overall, I enjoyed the book

⭐ With this book The Rainbow Comes and Goes, Anderson Cooper and his mother Gloria Vanderbilt have completed a lovely year-long project, so personal that they could have kept it to themselves, and yet, we are fortunate that they shared. Cooper, of course, is the celebrated journalist who comes into our homes on a nightly basis and helps us celebrate New Year’s once a year. His mother is design icon, painter, actress, and legendary poor little rich girl, heir to a Vanderbilt fortune, Gloria Vanderbilt, she of jeans fame. Unlike so many of us who never quite communicate with our loved ones and then watch them die, only to wonder why we never asked questions about their life, Cooper decided to get to know his enigmatic mother. In a year-long series of emails, Gloria Vanderbilt opens up about her early life, her feelings surrounding Cooper’s father’s untimely death, her relationship with her distant mother, and the coping with Cooper’s brother’s suicide. And in these poignant, revealing emails, we learn—as does Cooper—so much about a woman who has lived a life in the spotlight yet hidden to us all, even to her son. And Cooper’s reactions to her revelations leads him to make his own revelations and conclusions about life, death, happiness, and what life is truly about. As someone approaching seventy years of age, I identified with ninety-one year old Vanderbilt. She says that by the time we reach old age, life has a way of working out, i.e. our experiences all fall into place, and we know how to accept our triumphs and our failures. And that, she says, is what life is all about. No one can be happy all the time, for if that happened, we would not know what happiness is. We must know grief to know happiness. After all, the rainbow comes and goes.

⭐ There was so much I loved about this book. The epic story, the back and forth changing of voice, the fun ,the love, and even the pain. So you must be wondering, why just a 3 star review? The main storyteller of the book was Gloria Vanderbilt, so most of the dialogue was hers. I guess her childlike nature, the fact that she fell in love 2 MONTHS after her husband died, and that she really had no concept what a normal life struggle (like am I going to have money to fix my car to get to my job) was too much for me. I actually started to wonder about her mental health as the book went on. It was a very interesting read, and she has led a spectacular life.

⭐ Biographies have never been a source of reading pleasure for me. They have always thrown me back to school days when I only skimmed biography’s as source material for class assignments. They are usually to loaded with to much family pedigree facts, dates-dates and more dates not to mention people I don’t care about and again pedigree’s that bored me to death! This was not so much a biography as a late-in-life getting to know each other, rather almost a last ditch effort, in a son finally breaking down the walls of silence and both Mother and Son discovering each other.I must admit, I was already quite familiar with Gloria Vanderbilt and had read all that I could find on her after stumbling across the Poor Little Rich Girl historical documents quite by accident when I waa about 14 and have been rather a fascinated fan of her life ever since and was rather hoping to get a first-person account of her childhood and more tidbits of the glitz and glamour of her life. I knew who Anderson Cooper was and that he was her youngest child and very little about his CNN career as the political world has become a minefield and my respect for journalists had nose-dived in the last 10-15 years when they became less sources for news that purveyors of news as it pertained to their individual opinions. I was surprised to actually find him interesting and “real” and that this book held absolutely no political agenda. It was simply a story told thru correspondence from a Mother and Son and it moved me deeply! It made me question the possibilities of having this same experience with my children but mostly how much it might have helped me understand a Mother that I never was able to talk to, never understood and found I still carried resentments toward 3 years after her death and how it might have helped us bridge the gaps that neither of us were able to find in her lifetime. How much peace I could have maybe found if we had attempted something like this – done thru letters (or rather emails) since face to face talking always ended disastrous for us and how wonderful it might have been to have finally found a way to break thru those barriers and perhaps gotten to know a Mother I loved but a lot of the time did not like.I found the letters fascinating – full of important history – but more importantly such a sweet bonding experience for a famous Mother and her also famous son without the melodrama and last “kick her in the teeth” type of celebrity stories as biographies by Joan Crawford and Bette Davis’s daughter’s wrote about their Mother’s after their deaths! This was felt more like a love story than a biography and I found it both saddened me (at my lost opportunity with my Mother) and made me feel warm & fuzzy at the way this strengthened their relationship as her life was winding down on its last years on this earth. I thoroughly recommend this book to anyone – everyone!

⭐ As his famous mother approaches the age of 92, journalist Anderson Cooper engages her in a correspondence which reveals their differing perspectives on the book’s subtitles of life, love, and loss. Following the death of her father when she was only 18 months old and the removal from her mother’s care at age 8, Gloria Vanderbilt had seemingly little control over her own destiny, which was the subject of legal battles between adults eager to control her trust fund. As was the custom in families of considerable wealth, responsibility for the care of children was often delegated to servants. Gloria’s deepest emotional bond was with her beloved nanny Dodo, but even that relationship was disrupted in the wake of the infamous custody battle between her mother and aunt. Gloria’s guardian, Aunt Gertrude, was formal and distant, while her mother was preoccupied with a life of celebrity, travel, and extravagance. Little wonder that Gloria had difficulty judging what a functional family would look like, leaving her to fall prey, at age 17, to the advances of rich and famous older men of her time, which led to four marriages. Gloria’s last marriage was to Wyatt Cooper, with whom she had two sons, Carter and Anderson. In that family of four, Gloria found her greatest contentment, which was sadly shattered when Wyatt died during heart surgery and her son Carter jumped to his death right before her eyes.Determined to find his own way in life independent of his mother’s fame and fortune, Anderson Cooper forged a distinguished career in journalism, often traveling to war zones and other dangerous locales. His attempts to create his separate identity were largely successful, with this reader reluctantly having to admit that she did not know that Anderson Cooper was Gloria Vanderbilt’s son.The book reveals a respectful, mature, and loving relationship between mother and son, but their views on self-efficacy could not be more opposite. Gloria believes that life is just what happens to you. Quoting Wordsworth, she attributes happiness to happenstance, saying, “the rainbow comes and goes.” Anderson is not satisfied with this explanation, saying he will not be content to wait for the rainbow to reappear, nor is he confident that it will. He accepts responsibility for his own happiness, believing it is intentional and achievable. Even if the question-and-answer style of this book makes it hard to follow at times, the shocking stories of Gloria’s earliest romantic liaisons and the sleazy details of the custody battle will appeal to some readers’ paparazzi side.

⭐ I love this book. I live in the Palm Springs desert and have always looked up to Anderson. My Mother and I had a very good relationship, but cancer took her away at 79. I just loved the exchanges between Anderson and Gloria. It was touching on so many levels. I am also a gay man and my Mother was very supportive me of as well. I was a teacher for 39 years. I would give this book and its two authors an A++ !!!Ray M. Smythe

⭐ I found a copy of this book in the gay section of a local bookstore. Knowing that Anderson Cooper is gay and with the word “Rainbow” in the title, I made what I thought was the safe deduction –that this book would have some gay content– and ordered it online. It has next to none. At one moment, Cooper refers to coming out. At another, his mother tells him “You have a loving partner.” That’s all. Cooper tells us nothing about his life as a gay man. Almost all the book is about Gloria Vanderbilt. Had I known my poetry better, perhaps I would not have bought and read the book, as we learn near the very end that “The rainbow comes and goes” is from a poem by Wordsworth and, as Cooper tells us, the title refers to “the acceptance that things can’t always be good.” Nothing gay is implied in the least. Vanderbilt is repetitive and can be very prosaic in her writing, as in “Let’s not end on a sad note. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.” She can occasionally be very frank, such as when she refers to one of her unnamed lovers as “the Nijinsky of cunnilingus,” but these surprising moments are very, very few. I considered rating this book one star, but as the writing style is passable, I am giving it two. It was at times hard to follow, especially at the beginning, when one doesn’t always know if Cooper or Vanderbilt or Cooper is the one doing the writing. In the end, mother and son have written a book that is one gigantic bore. And if you think this book might be good escapist fare, think again, as the 91-year-old (92 by the book’s end) Vanderbilt muses more than a time or two on death, and on her own in particular. Had I thought that one of the co-authors was writing at age 91/92, I might have considered the possibility that this book could be morbid, so again I take some of the blame, but in no case would I recommend this mother-son correspondence turned book to anyone.

⭐ Anderson Cooper is an amazing man. The death of his father when Anderson was a small child, .the suicide of his brother, the nurturing or lack thereof from his emotionally stunted although famous mother, the wealth that surrounded him throughout his life, and who knows what else, converged to create a beautiful-looking and almost Jesus-like adult man. I am sure the idea for this book was Anderson’s and not his mother’s. Anderson is a seeker, trying to understand himself and his mother and their relationship. He is fortunate she is still alive an willing to participate in this reflective work. The book was interesting and compelling in that it was about two famous and beautiful people who just happen to be mother and son. As a reader and someone who is curious about the lives of the rich and famous, I learned much from this book. The reflections from Anderson’s mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, seemed to me to have a layer of self-protectiveness, self-aggrandizement, and inauthenticity about them, and I realize that this is the best she can do after a lifetime in the spotlight spinning public conversations to protect her damaged ego. Anderson, on the other hand, conveys, to me, a raw, caring need to understand his losses and how they have shaped him and injected into him such a high level of honesty and acceptance–even forgiveness of his mother. The book is short and reads quickly.

⭐ This book of communications between two well known people, son and mother, has much to contemplate. I became annoyed by Ms Vanderbilt’s lack of thinking ahead about the consequences of her decisions made in her life. I think Mr. Cooper has a much better outlook, even though he might be considered more negative. I tend to be negative, but I prefer the word realistic. Ms. Vanderbilt seems more self centered, while her son seems to be more about caring for others. I was intrigued how both seem to care little about wealth and privilege. Some parts were difficult for me to read. I lost a 17 year old son to suicide, but Ms. Vanderbilt watched her son jump from the 14th floor of a building. How does one recover from that? This book was an interesting read. I’m glad I read it.

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