From Publishers Weekly
If Bono's story doesn't end up as a Lifetime TV movie, it will at least merit an episode of E! Hollywood True Story. The lesbian daughter of Sonny and Cher follows up her excellent coming out guide, Family Outing (1998), with a slim, honest memoir covering her turbulent life in the years between 1988 and '93. Bono and her girlfriend, Rachel, formed a band, hoping that performing together would revitalize their waning relationship but things didn't work out that way. The Star tabloid outed Bono shortly after she and Rachel signed a record deal with Geffen Records. The two novices stayed closeted while they tried to record a CD and deal with Rachel's alcoholism and the fact that Bono had fallen in love with Joan, a beautiful, 40-something friend of the family who had just been diagnosed with cancer. Bono's fear of confrontation drags out the misery for this love triangle (and the reader) during the book's middle section, which sometimes plays like an overwrought episode of MTV's Real World. Oddly, the recording-studio scenes lack passion, and with no discussion of lyrics or orchestrations, Bono seems like an outsider in her own musical group; it's hard for the reader to feel much empathy when their single tanks. The last half of the book, when Bono commits to Joan just as her health begins to deteriorate, packs an emotional punch with brutally frank depictions of loving and living with a person with a terminal illness. Bono spares no one, including herself, with a wrenching and exhausting finish.
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From Booklist
This is no
Mommie Dearest. It's not even a biography ofChastity Bono, daughter of Sonny and Cher. Rather, this is a memoir ofthe time Chastity spent with her lover Joan Stephens, a friend ofCher's, someone Chastity had been attracted to since she was13. Chastity, in her early twenties, and Joan got together after Joanwas diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. As the duo got closer, theillness progressed, until Joan died after a long, painful battle withcancer. Unlike's Drescher's
Cancer Shmancer (see below), there'sno upbeat tone here. Bono's chronicle of Stephens' illness is detailedand depressing. The uberstory, Bono's coming-of-age saga, alsoencompasses her coming out, career problems, and other relationships,but the focus is on what it's like to be a caregiver to a dying lovedone. Bono (and writer Kort) offer a vivid piece although readers maywonder how she kicks the prescription drug habit she acquired duringStephens' illness. Chastity will be on the talk-show circuit, so maybethat question will be answered there.
Ilene CooperCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
