The third Gilmore girl A memoir

The Playbill bio that accompanied Bishop's first starring stage role (playing Sheila in the original 1975 Broadway production of A Chorus Line) emphasized the actor's "survival" in show business for, at that point, 12 years. Bishop went on to win a Tony for that role and have a successful career on the stage and screen. Today, she's most known for playing Emily Gilmore, the matriarch of The Gilmore Girls. Bishop's memoir fills in all the scenes of her fascinating life leading up to that role. From her childhood study of ballet to her steep climb to Broadway and Hollywood, her story is one of perseverance and good old-fashioned chutzpah. Though Bishop describes herself as a private person who's not nosy or interested in gossip, her book is a definitively dishy read, written with warmth and refreshing frankness about the hard work and luck that contributed to her career. VERDICT A captivating narrative, engagingly told.--Claire Sewell

Unassuming show-biz memoir by Broadway and screen veteran Bishop. By her account, Bishop--nee Carole, now Kelly because, as it happens with so many actors, "Carole Bishop" was already listed with SAG--has lived a long life with just a few modest scandals: an affair here, a drink or puff too many there. Her best-known credit was courtesy of Amy Sherman-Palladino, who cast her in a role she cherished for years: Lauren Graham's mother on the beloved TV seriesThe Gilmore Girls, a rule-bound patrician who becomes less uptight as the years roll on. Bishop herself played strictly by the rules, at least on screen: she holds that her job as an actor is "to learn my lines and make them work exactly as written," with no ad libs allowed, thank you. Her dedication to craft is evident, her credentials undeniable, and if the memoir doesn't have a lot of interior drama, it's simply because Bishop kept her nose down and worked. She wasn't particularly lucky in love until finally meeting her soulmate, living happily until cancer took him, on which she writes, affectingly, "Friends who've been right by your side through the crisis head home and get back to their lives as they should.…The silence becomes deafening, and the full force of ugly, excruciating, inescapable grief crashes into you." Rescuing her from grief was old friend Sherman-Palladino, who brought her in for a brief recurring role inThe Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Her agreeable memoir is sprinkled with fun facts, as when she asked Michael Bennett whyA Chorus Line (she was in the original cast) was not simplyChorus Line: "Because," he patiently explained, "when an alphabetical list of Broadway shows is published in newspapers and trade magazines,A Chorus Line will come first." Catnip for fans of the title series, and a revealing look at the craft of character acting. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.