A moving portrait of a bizarre childhood written with emotional nuance and bittersweet deliverance.
A Hollywood actor, screenwriter, and director reflects on her upbringing in a doomsday cult in the 1970s.
Anchored by diary entries, Turner’s memoir vividly recalls her unconventional upbringing in the cultlike Lyman Family. She was not raised by her mother, Bess, but by other group members who home-schooled her and the other community children. The isolated, hierarchical Lyman commune was led by charismatic “Lord” Mel Lyman, who preached about the dangers of everyone outside their community. He, alongside “Queen” Jessie, reigned over a network of extension communities, all rooted in the knowledge of an impending apocalypse. In January 1975, the Lyman followers were instructed that the global population of “World People” would be extinguished and only their group would ascend in a spaceship to live on Venus. When the ship never materialized, Turner, as the oldest of six children and having already been shuffled among various homes, was relocated to the East Coast with her excommunicated mother, who had abandoned the group altogether. Though the author relished the camaraderie of cooking, farming, cleaning, and being a kid with the other Lyman children, she became more confused and less enchanted once the culture shock of living outside the clan kicked in. Still, she continued writing in her journal, mostly as a means of self-expression. “There have been points in my life when keeping a record of what was happening to me felt like the only power I had,” she writes. The author’s prose is reflective, vivid, and confessional, a rich combination full of striking imagery. Turner found much to reconcile as she entered early adulthood, and she even considered foregoing college to rejoin the Lyman Family. In a memorable closing sequence, the author expresses her disillusionment with the outdated gender hierarchy still in place on the farm.
A moving portrait of a bizarre childhood written with emotional nuance and bittersweet deliverance.Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: 9780593237595
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
A self-aware confessional from a successful and controversial musician.
The Grammy-winning Irish singer/songwriter looks back on her eventful life.
Promising candor and clarity, O’Connor (b. 1966) opens with a caveat that her story only details lucid periods of her life when she was psychologically “present.” Omitting hazy years in which she drifted off “somewhere else inside myself”—material some readers may wish she included—the author shares pivotal milestones (raising four children) and entertaining anecdotes. O’Connor vividly recalls an abusive Catholic childhood in Dublin with a cruel, unstable mother. As a rebellious teenager, she was sent to a reform asylum, where her love for music became the ultimate refuge, leading to band gigs and eventually a record deal in London in 1985. The Lion and the Cobra achieved gold status, and O’Connor describes the development of her persona: shaved head, baggy clothing, and stormy, antagonistic, always forthright demeanor. The author addresses her mental health challenges and experimentation with sex and drugs (“In the locked ward where they put you if you’re suicidal, there’s more class A drugs than in Shane MacGowan’s dressing room”) as well as two iconic moments in her career: her smash-hit cover of the Prince-penned “Nothing Compares 2 U” and her notorious performance on Saturday Night Live in 1992, when she ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II. “A lot of people say or think that tearing up the pope’s photo derailed my career. That’s not how I feel about it,” she writes. Rather, it allowed her to return to her roots as a live performer instead of remaining on the pop-star trajectory (“you have to be a good girl for that”). In cathartic sections, O’Connor considers the era leading up to that appearance as a personal death, with the years following a kind of “rebirth.” Though she touches on her agoraphobia and later psychological issues, with which many of her fans will be familiar, the final third of the memoir sputters somewhat, growing less revelatory than earlier passages.
A self-aware confessional from a successful and controversial musician.Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-358-42388-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
100% Mariah, unburdened by filler material and written with pure heart and soul for both die-hard and casual fans.
The mega-selling singer chronicles her life via the “moments that matter.”
Carey begins with her early childhood on Long Island in the 1970s, when she used music as a form of escapism and distraction. The fearful youngest daughter of a Black father and an Irish Catholic, opera singer mother, Carey and her two siblings braved physical violence, racial prejudice, and emotional trauma within a turbulent household “weighed down with yelling and chaos.” In the late 1980s, her music career began to blossom, especially after she met and fell in love with Tommy Mottola, who was the head of Columbia Records at the time. Carey openly shares the lurid details of her controlling and emotionally abusive marriage to Mottola in the 1990s. Through her notes on the multifaceted recording process, readers will see the author’s undeniable passion and work ethic as well as her burgeoning self-confidence. Some of the most entertaining moments are encapsulated in dishy free-form anecdotes sandwiched between tales of music career honors, personal triumphs and hardships, and health problems. Carey is at her best when her outspoken personality shines through, as when describing numerous “diva” moments or her harsh regrets about the “collision of bad luck, bad timing, and sabotage” that characterized the making of her disastrous film Glitter. The author also offers appreciative commentary on Marilyn Monroe, Whitney Houston, and Aretha Franklin (“my high bar and North Star, a masterful musician and mind-bogglingly gifted singer who wouldn’t let one genre confine or define her”). Carey frankly reveals the many conflicting emotions she has experienced as a mixed-race woman both energized by and dismayed at the music industry’s cutthroat, often prejudicial landscape. “Lambs,” as her fans call themselves, will find plenty of juicy gems, including the revelation that she recorded a never-released “breezy-grunge, punk-light” album. These intimate ruminations are impressively detailed without being overly concerned with industry gossip or petty squabbles, creating a refreshingly candid celebrity self-portrait. One of Kirkus and Rolling Stone’s Best Music Books of 2020.
100% Mariah, unburdened by filler material and written with pure heart and soul for both die-hard and casual fans.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-16468-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Andy Cohen Books/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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