Pop Rock, Soft Rock, Singers - Biography, Rock & Roll - Dance

Goddess: Inside Madonna

Name: Goddess: Inside Madonna
Author: Barbara Victor
ISBN: 9780060199302

by Barbara Victor

Available on Bookshop Write a review

Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.

Overview

Goddess is the book that Madonna and her entourage did not want published. Long before the star could instruct her family and friends not to talk to the author, Barbara Victor spent more than eighteen months in Michigan, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, California, New York, and Florida, interviewing Madonna's father and stepmother, her grandmother and other family members, as well as friends, neighbors, business associates, and former lovers and colleagues, some of whom knew the Ciccone family from the time Madonna was a young child, many of whom have never before spoken either on or off the record.

In this extraordinary biography, Barbara Victor taps into previously unexplored sources to unmask the privet person behind the public image. As a result of her extensive research, Victor casts new light on every aspect of Madonna's career and private life — from her childhood in Michigan to her early years in New York, from meteoric ascent to stardom to her most recent incarnation as an English wife and mother.

After almost two decades, since she first appeared in the international music scene, Madonna continues to fascinate and challenge both her fans and her detractors. With her remarkable ability to reinvent herself — from diva to provocateur, from artist to mogul — she continues to command more attention and arouse more controversy than any other public figure of our time. Alternately criticized and revered, Madonna consistently and dramatically sets style, social, sexual, and musical trends and yet she remains an enigma to her public, keeping her most intimate identity hidden from all but her closest friends.Goddess offers explosive newrevelations about Madonna's life, her career, and the fact or fantasy of her lesbian and heterosexual relationships. Barbara Victor has written the definitive biography about a woman who gives new meaning to the term superstar.

Reviews

There are no reviews yet. Log in to write one.

Editorials

From Barnes & Noble

With new details about the personal life of the pop megastar, plus an in-depth look at her childhood, Goddess is a fascinating exploration of what makes Madonna tick. Barbara Victor's unauthorized biography is drawn from interviews with Madonna's family, friends, and lovers, most of whom have never been quoted in previous books. Exclusive photographs and a focus on Madonna's extraordinary talent for business set this biography apart from the scores of other books on the singer.

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.

Kirkus Reviews

Journalist Victor (The Lady, 1998, etc.) has clearly spent years conducting interviews and compiling quotes from secondary sources for her examination into the life of pop-goddess Madonna. She's also done her best to tell a story intriguing enough to be a compelling read without resorting to tabloid-style sleaze-mongering. Despite these efforts, Victor doesn't quite manage more than to circle her subject without ever truly capturing the woman, in the process producing little more than a prolonged Behind the Music script. The author assembles some interesting interview subjects, notably Madonna's maternal grandmother and several of the star's jilted lovers. Unfortunately, she doesn't know which vignettes to condense in her fractured, sometimes repetitive chronology. After spending too much time on Madonna's childhood, she builds up steam with an in-depth look at the performer's rise to stardom. But when the narrative gets around to Madonna's life after achieving celebrity, it becomes increasingly mundane; there's little here that hasn't been told before, and tired tales about Sean Penn and Sandra Bernhard can't be made fresh again simply by adding exclamation marks. To Victor's credit, she avoids the temptation to sensationalize Madonna's numerous sexual exploits, exploring the star's erotic liaisons, lesbian affairs, and abortions in a matter-of-fact way. And in a few instances, the intimate details Victor reveals-about Madonna's mentor Christopher Flynn, ex-lover Carlos Leon, and current husband Guy Ritchie-show great insight into the singer's public persona. Yet in all the time Victor spends explaining why Madonna wanted to be a star, and what people helped her become a star, shenever adequately explores what Madonna actually became famous for: singing. Madonna is renowned for reinventing herself, and the author can't quite keep up. The overdetermined, central motif here-Madonna as Eva Peron-is already outdated.