“Cher: The Memoir Part 1,” speaks about Cher Sarkisian’s unorthodox childhood, and her complex relationship with her various lovers, as well as with her career. The story is written in chronological order, detailing all of Cher’s “firsts,” first love, first show, first intoxication, and first heartbreak. In this memoir, Cher reveals the truths behind her public persona and shows how each success and failure shaped her into such a cultural icon. The tone is conversational, frank, and sometimes witty. Cher seems intent to showcase her own narrative and reclaim the truth from decades of tabloid gossip. Despite a tumultuous upbringing and stifling careers and relationships, Cher achieved stardom through persistence and reinvention. She wrote this partially for readers to see the truth of her success and struggles, and partially as a liberation from her traumas, from her nomadic poverty-stricken childhood, and her relationship with Sonny Bono.
Cher begins with describing her family history before she was born. Through this, she contextualizes her inherited trauma due to alcohol, drug, and abuse, as well as her tendency for nomadism, constantly moving from place to place. Understanding these roots make her later resilience and her family dynamics are more impactful, because it makes clear Cher’s roots are who she is too. At first she was a shy, awkward girl that loved to sing but refused to conform, making her unpopular; this stark contrast makes her rise to fame, as a bold charismatic popstar even more shocking. And because she knew first hand what instability and abuse looked like, Cher refused to repeat the generational cycle she grew up in and developed firm boundaries. She left relationships she was unsatisfied in quickly and firmly, refusing to tolerate drug addiction, cheating, and early abuse. By showing her family’s past relationships and how she reinvents them, it makes Cher seem more realistic, less materialistic, and emphasizes her growth.
One of the most striking aspects about this novel is the way Cher describes Hollywood. The entertainment industry is spoken about with a kind of matter-of-fact honesty, as if chaos is simply background noise. What makes her reflection even more surprising is how casually she mentions buying Ferraris and new houses even during periods where she is extremely in debt. For Cher and many in the entertainment industry, spending becomes a way to cope in the midst of instability, and keep up with the trends to remain in the public eye. For an average middle-class American, Cher’s life feels unreal even in poverty, showing how the pressures of fame can push people into lifestyles unimaginable and unattainable anywhere else. However, Cher’s relationship with money is only one example of how warped the entertainment world can be. Hollywood is a restricting world with dangerous, desperate, and disapproving people. Along with the drug addicts, abusers, and manipulators, Cher describes success itself as one of those dangerous and disapproving people. Hollywood and its culture repeatedly tries to stop Cher. Chapter after chapter, she is described as too promiscuous, dismissed as unserious or unconventional-looking, and is manipulated by the system around her. She often laments on roles she could have earned if only she had agreed to sleep with powerful men, exposing the industry’s deep misogyny and injustice. Cher learns to network, to call on others to get opportunities, but she is also cheated, underpaid, and undervalued. Her worth in the industry drops the moment she gets pregnant and again when she divorces Sonny. Even her arrangement with Sonny entraps her- he forces Cher into a contract that gives him control of her finances and career, leaving her with little autonomy in their relationship as well as her life choices. Hollywood tried to control her entire life.
Throughout the book, Cher never lets herself feel too sad. She avoids melodrama even when recounting painful experiences, instead opting for self-deprecation and simplicity. Each devastating event isn’t coddled around excessive commentary and self-reflection but flies to the next event in Cher’s life. She doesn’t present tragedy as sad and life-changing but something natural. Even as she describes her childhood insecurities, career struggles, and the difficulties of fame, she is never ashamed or regretful. The factual accounts make the readers feel lost, wanting more depth and self-reflection. Not only is it harder to emphasize her struggles, it is harder to understand the full depth of the event and the impact it had on her. I barely feel like she has grown and learned from her mistakes at all.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is an intense Cher fan or interested in the music culture of the 70s. Although I found Cher’s emphasis on telling stories fascinating (even going the extra length to include detailed tales about her lover’s family tragedies), my recommendation is limited because I found the book difficult to get though (who needs a second part to their memoir…). In addition to Cher’s lack of commentary, she is too detailed in the book. Because she refuses to kill her darlings, the reader is left with endless details in rapid succession. When every experience, big or small, makes it into this narrative and is given the same level of attention, the truly significant moments lose their impact. In big chunky paragraphs with little spacing in between, Cher just infodumps. I had to sit through unnecessary amounts of detail about every single person Cher had encountered from the music industry and every outfit she ever wore, and the novel became a timeline of events rather than a recollection or story as Cher wanted.
