Day: October 2, 2019

Reissued in Virago Paperback in September 2019

June 2019 is the 50^th anniversary of Judy Garland’s death

August 2019 is the 80^th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz

October 4^th  the motion picture JUDY starring Renee Zellwegger and Jessie Buckley is released in the UK

An irresistible mixture of memoir, biography, cultural analysis, experiment and hero-worship about one person’s enduring fascination. This is for anyone who has ever nursed an obsession or held a candle to a star.

Judy Garland has been an important figure in Susie Boyt’s world since she was three years old; comforting, inspiring and, at times, disturbing her.  In this unique book, Boyt travels deep into the underworld of hero-worship, reviewing through the prism of Judy our understanding of rescue, consolation, love, grief and fame.

Layering key episodes from Garland’s life with defining moments from her own, Boyt demands with insight and humour, what it means, exactly, to adore someone you don’t know. Need hero-worship be a pursuit that’s low in status or can it be performed with pride and style? Are there similarities that lie at the heart of all fans? nd what is the proper husbandry of a twenty-first-century obsession, anyway?

I received a copy of this book from Virago Books in return for an honest review.

My Thoughts…

I didn’t know quite what to expect when I picked up this book. A biography of Judy Garland, whose films I have always liked, or a memoir of the author, whose life is somehow entangled with the iconic star? In truth, it is both of these, and something more, an insight into celebrity and obsession in the twenty-first-century.

Honestly written, with no filter, this is an intense book, the author truly believes that her love of Judy, someone who she never met, has and does have a profound effect on her life. Many of us have obsessions, some of us with celebrities, I love the Osmonds. I grew out of my blinkered obsession in my mid-teens, but I still like their music, and listen to it today. Few of us are so affected, but this makes riveting reading.

Aside from the biography, illustrated with wonderful images. there is the memoir, which is very readable sometimes amusing and poignant. The author also highlights obsession as an entity and explores through her experience, whether this is a positive or negative force.

Worth reading for the intrinsic interest value alone. It is thought-provoking and resonates.

‘When Judy sang to me as I grew older she seemed to confirm things that I’d all my life held to be true:’

*   Things that are hard have more of life at their heart than things that are easy.

*   All feelings, however painful, are to be prized.

*   Glamour is a moral stance.

*    The world is crueller and more wonderful than anyone ever says.

*    Loss, its memory and its anticipation, lies at the heart of human experience.

*    Any human situation, however deadly, can be changed, turned round and improved beyond recognition on any given day, in one minute, in one hour.

*    You must try to prepare for the moment that you’re needed for the call could come at any time.

*    There are worse things in life than being taken for a ride.

*    If you have a thin skin all aspects of life cost more and have more value.

*    Loyalty to one other is preferable to any other kind of human system.

*    Grief is no real match for the human heart, which is an infinitely resourceful organ.

Susie Boyt was born in London and educated at Camden School for Girls and Oxford University.  After a nerve-racking stint in a lingerie boutique and an alarming spell working in PR for Red Stripe lager and the Brixton Academy, she settled down to writing and is the author of six acclaimed novels including The Last Hope of Girls, which was short-listed for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and Only Human, which was short-listed for the Mind Award. Of her last novel, Love & Fame  The Sunday Times said ‘she writes with such precision and wisdom about the human heart under duress that the novel is hard to resist.’ 

Susie wrote a much-loved weekly column about life and art for the Financial Times Weekend for fourteen years and still contributes regularly to their books and fashion pages.  Last year she edited The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories for Penguin Classics.  Susie is also a director at the Hampstead Theatre in London and works part-time for Cruse Bereavement Care.

She lives in London with her husband and two daughters. She is the daughter of the painter Lucian Freud and the great grand-daughter of the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.

My Judy Garland Life was Book of the Week on Radio 4, shortlisted for the Pen Ackerley Prize, extracted in U.S Vogue and staged at The Nottingham Playhouse in 2014.