Goddess [Hardcover]

Barbara Victor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 6, 2001

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 new revelations 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.

Editorial Reviews

From 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, Inc.

About the Author

Barbara Victor is a journalist who has covered the Middle East for most of her professional life. She has worked for U.S. News & World Report, Life Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, and Elle and is currently a contributing editor to Madame Figaro and Politique Internationale, as well as to BMF Radio, where she has a weekend program entitled An American in Paris. She is also the author of four novels, with have been translated into twenty-two languages and five nonfiction works. Ms. Victor lives in Paris with her French husband and two French poodles.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Harper (November 6, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006019930X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060199302
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,881,938 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #48 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( M ) > Madonna

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not such a "Goddess", July 31, 2005

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Goddess: Inside Madonna (Mass Market Paperback)

Thoiugh not the first, best or most intriguing of the groundbreaking female pop stars, Madonna has some sort of hold over the American attention, possibly because she changed her image so often. But don't expect an easy read in Barbara Victor's "Goddess" -- this one is less than divine.

The book opens with Madonna preparing for her role in the musical "Evita," based on the life of Eva Peron. This turned out to be the turning point of Madonna's life: It was in the period when she became pregnant, cleaned up her act somewhat, and made her first (and so far, only) acclaimed movie.

Then it bobs back to the arrive of the immigrant Ciccone family in the United States, the early days of Madonna's parents, and the tragedies that her family never recovered from. From there, it tracks her as she became a struggling dancer, whose sexual dancepop became a massive hit. After a disastrous short marriage, many boyfriends (and girlfriends), a porn book, and an unfortunate movie career, she finally settled down with director Guy Richie to become the not-so-quintessential British wife and mother.

Madonna is a bit of a love-her-or-hate-her person, especially since she has none of the warmth, stability or humour of similar pop stars like Deborah Harry. So it's not surprising that Victor's biography will probably inspire ire or delight in anyone who reads it... assuming they can get through it at all.

There's a strange split in Victor's opinions on Madonna. She compares Madonna to the ancient virgin goddesses (huh?), and excuses much of her behavior. Then she ruthlessly shows Madonna's shallowness, sexual obsessiveness and arrogance. How? By the most damning evidence: her own words. Victor uses interview quotes, video footage, and even a behind-the-scenes special where she openly mocks and humiliates a childhood friend.

There is some interesting information, such as analysis of Madonna's songs and music videos, although Victor (like Madonna herself) focuses way too much on the loss of her mother. And were Victor able to cobble together all this information into a straightforward biography, she might be a pretty good writer.

Unfortunately, Victor is actually a pretty bad writer. There's a lot of meaty information here, but no linear series of events. It's very distracting to jerk the readers from Madonna's toddlerhood to her adult career, sometimes in the same page. But that's what Victor does. Even worse, this choppy biography is laced with endless psychoanalyzation, and a tendency to demonize or beatify people as Madonna sees them, not as they actually are.

Split adoration/disdain and a choppy narrative make "Goddess" a chore rather than a guilty pleasure, as a "scandalous" biography ought to be. Whatever you think of Madonna, this "Goddess" is unholy.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A TRAIN WRECK?, December 29, 2001

By 

Gerald Stoddard (Seattle, Washington) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Goddess (Hardcover)

Like a horrific train wreck that you can't take your eyes off, I could not put down this 400 page book written by Barbra Victor about Madonna. The feeling I'm left with? Like I've been punched in the gut and am left trying to catch my breath. I can not belive that such a poorly put together and unimaginitive "biography" is actually in print and being sold. It was nothing more than an endless, tiresome commentary about what and where Barbara Victor assumes is the life of Madonna based on circumstances throughout various stages. This biography boldly states the facts of the life of Madonna based on the assumptions of the author. The book does not flow, you are jerked back and forth between commentary and background information on what Miss Victor deems to be relative facts surrounding what she assumes to be life events. In all, I don't feel I have learned anything new about Madonna - I feel that I have wasted 20 hours reading a tiresome commentary that could have been a 3 page magazine article. I don't see the book based on fact and do not rely on it as a credible source of the life of this star. The book could have flowed better, could have been written with depth, could have been written from facts instead of just opinion. This tiresome effort has given me, for the first time in my life, an author whose books/works I refuse to read in the future. If this is all that Madonna has to worry about when faced with a tell-all biography written about her, then I am sure she sleeps well at night.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Diva Digest, November 11, 2001

By 

joanne may - See all my reviews

This review is from: Goddess (Hardcover)

This is the masters of Madonna's history. It's full of all the juicy details one would expect to read in a book about a mega star like Madonna. She's truly a one of a kind and this book tells all you'd want to know. I truly enjoyed every minute I spent with it.