Goddess: Inside Madonna - Softcover

Victor, Barbara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061031135 ISBN 13: 9780061031137

Publisher: HarperEntertainment, 2002

Synopsis

An intimate biography of Madonna with never-before published information about the performer that traces her evolution and explains her extraordinary popularity.

From the moment Madonna first appeared on the international music scene, she has been hounded, criticized, honored, revered, and ignored--and despite these conflicting reactions has managed to set social, sexual, and musical trends of the last two decades. She is a chameleon figure who has changed her look and her sound dramatically over the years, and despite her exhibitionist tendencies and the intense scrutiny of the press, has remained an enigma to the public, keeping her most intimate identity hidden from all but her closest acquaintances. GODDESS begins with material from a 1993 interview Victor had with Madonna. The author has interviewed Madonna's maternal grandmother, father, stepmother, siblings, first boyfriends, high school friend with whom she had a lesbian relationship, dance teacher/mentor, and many more people from her formative years.
Victor examines her emotional life, her career, the fact or fantasy of her lesbian and heterosexual relationships, her taste, her genius for reinvention, her brilliant business sense.

About this title

About the Author:

Barbara Victor is a journalist who has covered the Middle East for most of her professional life. She has worked for U.S. News & World Report, Life Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, and Elle and is currently a contributing editor to Madame Figaro and Politique Internationale, as well as to BMF Radio, where she has a weekend program entitled An American in Paris. She is also the author of four novels, with have been translated into twenty-two languages and five nonfiction works. Ms. Victor lives in Paris with her French husband and two French poodles.

From Publishers Weekly:

Even if it weren't competing head-to-head with two other Madonna biographies by titans in their fields (J. Randy Taraborrelli's Madonna: An Intimate Biography and Andrew Morton's Madonna), this overstuffed and plodding chronicle of the ever-morphing entertainer is sure to try the patience of most fans. Using the filming of Evita as a touchstone, Victor ceaselessly links much in Madonna's life to the struggle to make that film. Unconvinced readers may suspect the heavy emphasis is merely because Victor was in Argentina when the filming began in 1996 and at that point she decided to pen Madonna's life story. The lion's share of the tome is devoted to the pre-celebrity life of Madonna Louise Ciccone, the third of eight children raised in a large traditional Italian household in Michigan. Her mother died of breast cancer when Madonna was only six years old, leaving a void and obsession that both haunted and drove the future star toward her desire to be a dancer and then a singer and actress. Victor's erratic continuity will be a challenge for fans who like linear biographies. Although the author focuses on Madonna's life in New York before the release of her first album in 1983, numerous incidents provoke Victor to push readers decades forward and back with dizzying effect. Madonna has obligingly provided a storybook happy ending, with the Material Girl now happily married (to director Guy Ritchie) and a mother of two, living in the U.K. (Nov. 6)Forecast: Fans not already sated by Taraborrelli's fast-moving, admiring account may skip this one and wait for Morton's higher-profile release also in November.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperEntertainment
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0061031135
• ISBN 13: 9780061031137
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 464