This will go live on my blog on Feb. 12.


The subtitle of this essay collection implies that it is a fun, frothy set essays on celebrity. Possibly it discusses the way that we feel we know celebrities, that they are our friends (or enemies) when all we know are their carefully created personas.

Instead, these essays are about famous women we all have opnions on, including Britney Spears, Anna Nicole Smith and my beloved Winona Ryder. They take a more scholarly approach (think the sociology of celebrity) as well as a very personal relaying of their relationship to the author's life.

This is not the journey I expected to take but one I loved anyway.

Once, for my birthday – I can't remember which one, some late-teens birthday – I asked for just about every book I'd been able to identify about the Smiths and Morrissey. Family and friends dutifully bought them; on my birthday, I unwrapped a pile of thick biographical paperbacks. And I never read a single one of them. I'm not sure I even opened some of them. They sat and gathered dust until I sold them on eBay years later. The one Smiths book of mine that ended up being-well thumbed was The Smiths and Beyond, a collection of Kevin Cummins' photographs of the band, which contains few words other than a scattering of well-known quotes.

I've always had this weird thing of not really wanting to know anything much about my idols, invariably preferring an idea of them I've assembled from scraps of information, their own work, even things as tenuous as a single picture. As a teenager, I imbued my image of Victoria Beckham with an intelligence and wit the press certainly didn't ascribe to her, but also held close to my heart her reputation as the quiet, moody, aloof Spice Girl. I'd essentially made her into a composite of things I both liked and hated about myself, an interpretation that was probably a million miles from who she really was. I regarded Amy Winehouse like a personal saint, but have read very little about her, though I do own hundreds of bootleg live recordings of the same handful of songs. I always felt her music and her voice told me everything I needed to understand, that her lyrics were a far better way to know her than a million tell-alls. I think this way of seeing is also part of why I seldom participate in fandom, despite being fascinated by it as a culture. I want to carefully guard my personal interpretations of the things I love rather than open them up to others' analyses.

There is a point to all this that has to do with the book I'm reviewing, I swear. Actually, there are two. The first is that the subtitle of Massey's book, My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers, kept bringing me back to a Morrissey quote I half-remembered about how records or songs were his best friends when he was growing up, and that's what led me to this train of thought (although I absolutely can't track down the quote or anything like it now and am beginning to think I imagined it, or attributed someone else's words to him. Which seems quite ironically appropriate here). The second is that – as is made explicitly clear by the last essay of the collection – these essays are an exercise in personal mythology. They're as much about the author as they are her subjects. To put it another way, they're about the subjects not as they actually are, but specifically as the author sees them. There's an argument to be made that this is is a memoir-in-celebrities.

The essays often look at how pop culture treats its female icons – the ways in which the media tears some famous women apart and boxes others in to stereotyped categories – but they also deal with much more personal themes, touching on how Massey's adolescence, nascent adulthood and present life has been influenced by her icons. Those who bemoan what Slate called 'the first-person industrial complex' will probably not enjoy All the Lives I Want: it's a quintessentially millennial book, both in its critical approach to pop culture and its confessional nature. (On that note, Massey is candid about her eating disorder, and while it's clear her writing on the topic of celebrity bodies is cathartic, parts of some essays might make a tough read for anyone who has struggled with their own body image.)

The essays focus exclusively on women, ranging from fictional characters (the Lisbon sisters from The Virgin Suicides) to women writers (Sylvia Plath, Joan Didion) to contemporary pop stars (Britney Spears, Nicki Minaj). An essay about Amber Rose sits back-to-back with one about Plath; Massey dissects books, films and song lyrics, and examines stereotypes such as the 'crazy ex-girlfriend' trope. The titles are fabulous, for example 'Run the World: Amber Rose in the Great Stripper Imaginary' and 'Charlotte in Exile: A Case for the Liberation of Scarlett Johansson from Lost in Translation'. 'The Queen of Hearts' is an intriguing take on Courtney Love, positioning her not as the vulnerable, exploited figure many fans perceive, but embracing the negative image of her as a Machiavellian bitch. 'American Pain' similarly rejoices in Anna Nicole Smith's ascent to stardom despite her deprived origins and lack of demonstrable talent. 'Emparadised', which closes the collection, is the strongest and most personal of the essays, unpacking the impact of a fitful, destructive love affair as filtered through Didion's Play It As It Lays.

Some assumptions made here might be tenuous – but aren't assumptions and stubbornly-clung-to beliefs, often with very little root in fact, how we all understand and form 'relationships' with famous people who mean something to us? Regardless of whether you, the reader, were traumatised by the same 80s horror movies as the author, or cared about the media's skeevy countdown to the Olsen twins' 18th, Massey's book is a mirror held up to the way we understand the people we term our idols.

Thank You to Grand Central Publishing for providing me with a copy of Alana Massey's, All The Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen To Be Famous Strangers, in exchange for an honest review.

PLOT- In her essay collection, All The Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers, Alana Massey explores female icons, and their role in popular culture. She looks at how these celebrities influence us, and how society molds them, making the idea of celebrity a process of compartmentalizing and dehumanizing. She also explores how celebrities have impacted her own life.

LIKE- I like Massey's concept for All The Lives I Want, how she doesn't simply explore the idea of celebrity, but chooses celebrities that have made a direct impact on her. It's often seen as bad taste to admit that you've been influenced, or even take an interest in celebrities, but whether people admit it or not, I find it to be a rare thing that a person is not at least a little affected or interested in celebrity culture. I find Massey's willingness to admit this about herself and explore it, to be refreshing.

The last essay in the book, On Joan Didion and Personal Mythology as Survival, had my full attention. This essay is by far Massey's most personal, as she recalls her love of Didion ( who doesn't love Didion?), to a time in her life where she was in a toxic relationship with a drug addict. Massey also eloquently writes about Los Angeles and New York. Sure, some of the things she says about my beloved Los Angeles are not the most flattering, and I don't agree with her assessment of it being a fake city. When I hear someone refer to Los Angeles as a false place, I know in my heart that they don't understand my hometown. This aside, Massey writes poetically about the desert landscape of Southern California and juxtaposes it with the pulsing city of Manhattan. It's beautifully written and made me slow down to fully absorb the impact of her rich descriptions.

When writing about female celebrity bodies, Massey does not hold back from sharing her own anorexia. Her descriptions of her obsession with thinness are grotesque, yet she does not make apologies for feeling this way. She owns her obsession. I was repulsed and saddened by her confession, yet at the same time, I admire the brazen quality of her writing. For better or worse, this is how pop culture has made an impact on her, and there is no need to apologize or feel shame.

DISLIKE- When I requested All The Lives I Want, on Netgalley, I requested it for the premise alone. I was completely unfamiliar with Massey and to be honest, even after reading her book and doing a Google search, I'm not sure that I know a lot about her. To this end, her collection read as if I should have prior knowledge of her, as if she is a well-know celebrity. She drops bits of information about herself, such as being a former stripper, her battle with anorexia, or that she went to seminary school; but none of this adds up for me to really understand who she is or why I should care about her essays. Either this collection needs context or perhaps I'm just out of the loop. The essays are uneven in regard to those that have a personal vibe, and those that are more academic in tone. All The Lives I Want would have been much stronger, if the essays had all been more personal.

All of the celebrities that Massey profiles are ones that will be well known to most readers, which works as it makes All The Lives I Want, accessible, however, it's also material that has been done to death. Do we need another essay about Scarlett Johansson's sex-symbol status, or another one explaining the mistake in vilifying Courtney Love? Massey adds little to the conversation. Again, if she had gone a more personal route, I think I would have found relevance, but her often academic approach was dull and off-putting.

RECOMMEND- No. I loved the concept of, All The Lives I Want, but I found it to be a tedious read. Massey didn't leave me with a different perspective, and there isn't enough personal content to make me interested in her as a narrator. All The Lives I Want, could have been a much more engaging read, if she had placed herself at the center of exploring her interest in celebrities.

This book is setting my 2017 reading off right. I love the perfect mix of intelligent insight and light readability. The essays on Sylvia Plath, Courtney Love and Left-Eye Lopes were particularly great, and made me think differently about how we consider and discuss female celebrities. I also had a soft spot for the chapter on Being a Winona vs. Being a Gwyneth (Winona forever, obvs). Buy a copy of this book for yourself, then more copies to give to all the 15-35 year old women you know.

A stunningly frank and insightful collection of essays centered around famous (or infamous) women that tell the tale more of the author herself. Th essays cover topics of body image, the "crazy ex-girlfriend" trope, and general vilification or celebration of women by the public.

All the Lives I Want is well-written and sharp-witted. Focusing on famous celebrities, authors, and other female figures, the author delivers sharp commentary on aspects of how it is to live as a woman in a society where these public personas of women (self-designed or contrived by others) exists. And though the essays each center around one or two specific famous women, the author generally does a good job of avoiding assigning too much intent or trying to characterize these women (who she admits are strangers to her in the title) - although a couple of the essays did make me cringe at just how much personality was assigned to a famous figure based on interviews. The author does demonstrate an amazing ability to analyze and describe the actions of these women without tearing them down and without being patronizing, demonstrating her thoughtfulness in refusing to play into the habit of women putting down other women.

Overall, a very thoughtful, well-written and researched novel that brings a surprising level of academia-style research to examine aspects of pop culture.

Thanks to the publisher for an advance digital copy in exchange for a fair review!