DAKOTA DAYS: The Untold Story of John Lennon's Final Years

Mercilessly padded out with tedious, mostly-flavorless reconstructed dialogue, this is the dubious testimony of John Lennon's ""professional tarot card reader"" and supposed confidant during his last five years. Green's essentially zombie-esque Lennon chats on and on about his writer's block, his rocky relationship with Yoko Oho, his delusions (including a period when he believed himself to be dead), his double-family miseries. (""Some family I'm trying to bring together,"" John tells John, whom he calls Charles. ""Yoko thinks Julian is trying to spy for his mother, Sean is toddling around in a daze because all the signals he's being sent are fucked up. . . Julian, flesh of my flesh, bats his eyes at me and explains that it's real difficult to have such a famous father. . . ."") Meanwhile, Yoko is also confiding in Green--sharing her paranoid fantasies and her weird rituals, complaining about John's waywardnesses. Green gives Yoko stern advice: ""Wake up! If you can love, do it, for yourself, for John, for your baby in your womb."" And periodically, of course, Green makes tarot-card predictions--some of which, my-how-amazing, come true. Even if one were inclined to trust Green's memory, there's little of substance that's new here. And, considering the way this shoddy memoir is put together, most readers won't be inclined to trust Green's memory. (Don't, however, underestimate Beatlemania, which has sent the mediocre The Love You Make to the bestseller list.)