Oak Kitten
07-03-2006, 10:40 AM
During a leisurely Sunday morning peruse through the New York Times and came across this review of Helen Reddy's new memoir in the Book Review section.
Observation 1: The book appears to be short on substance and long on weirdness. Probably a ploy to get people to buy it. In fact, I find it hard to believe that the NY Times even bothered to review it. I am sure your autobiography will blow the doors off of offerings like this.
Observation 2: A propos your musings about changing careers in the July news update, Reddy has done so, which is probably a great boon to the music world. If you were to follow suit, it would be a disaster for anyone who cares about real music.
Review by SARAH FERRELL
Published: July 2, 2006
IS Helen Reddy a person of unorthodox beliefs, or a crackpot? Whichever, her memoir, "The Woman I Am," belongs right up there with the collected works of Shirley MacLaine.
THE WOMAN I AM
A Memoir.
By Helen Reddy.
Illustrated. 368 pp. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin. $26.95.
Readers’ Opinions
Forum: Book News and Reviews
Best remembered as co-writer and performer of the 1972 hit "I Am Woman" (hear me roar), Reddy grew up in a canonically dysfunctional family that put her on the Australian stage when she was a tyke. When not touring, the family was based in Melbourne, where, as an 11-year-old student at the Tintern Church of England Girls Grammar School, Reddy had what was perhaps her first out-of-body experience. She was thereby forever convinced of the immortality of the soul.
Unlucky in love, Reddy has had three husbands, to whom she refers by number rather than name: One was an alcoholic; Two, she says, was a substance abuser who acted as her business manager, stole her money and involved her in a vicious child-custody fight; and Three barely figures in the narrative.
It was on an Asian tour (with Three, as it happens) that Reddy realized she "had truly achieved my dream of an international career." Alas, she was least successful in Australia, although, as she says, "it was hardly my fault if Australian radio chose not to play a lot of my hits." Australian newspapers did pay attention: they picked on her for having a swelled head. They were really annoyed when, in the 1970's, Reddy decided to become an American citizen.
Reddy, who had done considerable research into her own family background, was a founding member of the Tasmanian Genealogical Society and sufficiently expert in the field to have been a guest speaker at the Mormon Church's 1991 International Genealogical Congress. Her other great and continuing interest was the study of matters metaphysical, particularly reincarnation and past-life regression, which she finds compatible with family history. This has brought her to some pretty startling conclusions about other people's family trees.
Reddy is a subscriber to the notion of group karma, which "involves several people — often family members but not necessarily in the same configuration — reincarnating together to resolve unfinished business, so spouses might reincarnate as siblings or vice versa." She applies this to, among other things, the British royal family, in which she takes an almost unhealthy interest. (See her take on Princess Diana, saint and martyr.)
In a not-to-be-missed chapter entitled "Royalty and Reincarnation," Reddy, having dropped the bombshell that Wallis Warfield Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, was the reincarnation of Richard III, provides a chart of the dramatis personae surrounding the abdication of Edward VIII to demonstrate that it all goes back to the Wars of the Roses. Wallis (or Richard), it seems, had a soul mission to atone for the murders of the little princes in the tower and to see that the crown was returned to its rightful heirs. Edward, Duke of Windsor, was once Richard's personal servant (he is given no name) and can again doggedly devote himself to his monarch once Wallis has arrived on the scene. The little princes are, of course, Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret. And, in the same chapter, Elvis was King Tut.
By 2001, the year she turned 60, Reddy had decided to look for a new career in the helping professions. Led by a more than usually complicated system of signs and portents, she took up training as a clinical hypnotherapist. And there she remains today, happily, one hopes, curing others of their psychic ills.
Sarah Ferrell is a former staff editor at The Times.
Observation 1: The book appears to be short on substance and long on weirdness. Probably a ploy to get people to buy it. In fact, I find it hard to believe that the NY Times even bothered to review it. I am sure your autobiography will blow the doors off of offerings like this.
Observation 2: A propos your musings about changing careers in the July news update, Reddy has done so, which is probably a great boon to the music world. If you were to follow suit, it would be a disaster for anyone who cares about real music.
Review by SARAH FERRELL
Published: July 2, 2006
IS Helen Reddy a person of unorthodox beliefs, or a crackpot? Whichever, her memoir, "The Woman I Am," belongs right up there with the collected works of Shirley MacLaine.
THE WOMAN I AM
A Memoir.
By Helen Reddy.
Illustrated. 368 pp. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin. $26.95.
Readers’ Opinions
Forum: Book News and Reviews
Best remembered as co-writer and performer of the 1972 hit "I Am Woman" (hear me roar), Reddy grew up in a canonically dysfunctional family that put her on the Australian stage when she was a tyke. When not touring, the family was based in Melbourne, where, as an 11-year-old student at the Tintern Church of England Girls Grammar School, Reddy had what was perhaps her first out-of-body experience. She was thereby forever convinced of the immortality of the soul.
Unlucky in love, Reddy has had three husbands, to whom she refers by number rather than name: One was an alcoholic; Two, she says, was a substance abuser who acted as her business manager, stole her money and involved her in a vicious child-custody fight; and Three barely figures in the narrative.
It was on an Asian tour (with Three, as it happens) that Reddy realized she "had truly achieved my dream of an international career." Alas, she was least successful in Australia, although, as she says, "it was hardly my fault if Australian radio chose not to play a lot of my hits." Australian newspapers did pay attention: they picked on her for having a swelled head. They were really annoyed when, in the 1970's, Reddy decided to become an American citizen.
Reddy, who had done considerable research into her own family background, was a founding member of the Tasmanian Genealogical Society and sufficiently expert in the field to have been a guest speaker at the Mormon Church's 1991 International Genealogical Congress. Her other great and continuing interest was the study of matters metaphysical, particularly reincarnation and past-life regression, which she finds compatible with family history. This has brought her to some pretty startling conclusions about other people's family trees.
Reddy is a subscriber to the notion of group karma, which "involves several people — often family members but not necessarily in the same configuration — reincarnating together to resolve unfinished business, so spouses might reincarnate as siblings or vice versa." She applies this to, among other things, the British royal family, in which she takes an almost unhealthy interest. (See her take on Princess Diana, saint and martyr.)
In a not-to-be-missed chapter entitled "Royalty and Reincarnation," Reddy, having dropped the bombshell that Wallis Warfield Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, was the reincarnation of Richard III, provides a chart of the dramatis personae surrounding the abdication of Edward VIII to demonstrate that it all goes back to the Wars of the Roses. Wallis (or Richard), it seems, had a soul mission to atone for the murders of the little princes in the tower and to see that the crown was returned to its rightful heirs. Edward, Duke of Windsor, was once Richard's personal servant (he is given no name) and can again doggedly devote himself to his monarch once Wallis has arrived on the scene. The little princes are, of course, Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret. And, in the same chapter, Elvis was King Tut.
By 2001, the year she turned 60, Reddy had decided to look for a new career in the helping professions. Led by a more than usually complicated system of signs and portents, she took up training as a clinical hypnotherapist. And there she remains today, happily, one hopes, curing others of their psychic ills.
Sarah Ferrell is a former staff editor at The Times.