My Judy Garland Life

Description

Fascinating and extraordinary, thrilling and poignant, MY JUDY GARLAND LIFE will speak to 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 life 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. What does it mean to adore someone you don't know? What is the proper husbandry of a twenty-first century obsession? Boyt's journey takes in a duetting breakfast with Mickey Rooney, a Munchkin luncheon, tea with the largest collector of Garlandia, an illicit late-night spree at the Minnesota Judy Garland Museum and a breathless, semi-sacred encounter with Miss Liza Minnelli...

Susie Boyt is the author of five other acclaimed novels and the much-loved memoir My Judy Garland Life which was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize, staged at the Nottingham Playhouse and serialised on BBC Radio 4. She has written about art, life and fashion for the Financial Times for the past fourteen years and has recently edited The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories by Henry James. She is also a director at the Hampstead Theatre. She lives in London with her family.

I'm blown away by this book . . . endlessly thoughtful, moving and entertaining . . . the writing is superb - Joseph O'Neill, author of NETHERLAND The book defies definition . . . it is a bold experiment that sets out to map the boundaries of celebrity obsession, and somewhere along the way discovers what it means to be human . . . beautiful, heart stopping writing - Viv Groskop, OBSERVER What a self-deprecating, funny, moving, entertaining read it is, a mad love letter from Susie Boyt to Judy Garland . . . It makes for a new kind of memoir - Ali Smith, THE TIMES