Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Average Customer Rating:

Excellent!	Customer Rating:
I don't understand the negative reviews! I love Carly Joni, and Carole. This book was definitely hard to put down. If you are a fan also do yourself a favor and buy ths book ASAP! It's fascinating.

A real snoozer. Poorly writter IMHO.	Customer Rating:
My genre. My favorite singers. When I wasn`t confused I found myself drifting off. A real snoozer...

Did not want it to end!!

Customer Rating:

Reading this book was like a dream. I had loved all three of these women but I didn't know the twists and turns of their lives, or the stories behind each of the songs. The whole saga, and that's what it is, of their creativity and their relationships, within the vibrant wider world of the 1960s and '70s, reminded me of Julie Taymor's Across the Universe. A dream that I did not want to wake up from. An intelligent, throught-provoking dream. What a book to share with a friend. i'm so glad my best friend gave this to me. It is full of passion and a feeling for the era and respect for these extroardinary women and what they went through. I wish I hadn't finished it. I want to read it again.

Desperately seeking an editor!

Customer Rating:

This book is desperately in need of a good editor! The only reason I gave this book 2 stars is because of all the in-depth research the author did but she clearly does not know how to write. She tries to cram as much information as she can into every page using way too many parenthesis' and dashes, which gets so confusing you have to read the sentence over to get her point. If you want to get some good information about the 60's and can tolerate her poor writing, there are some interesting facts there. The author's insights are shallow and it is hard to really appreciate what Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon accomplished because of the negative interpretation of the material she collected about them. I got the feeling that she was not born in that generation, so she had a hard time synthesizing the information that she received.

Where are the editors?

Customer Rating:

The public is hungry to know more about these 3 fantastic women. I think this book made the best selling charts on the strength of its subjects. A better book would have been #1 and a fantastic book would have stayed there a long time. This book is a missed opportunity. It's not that Sheila Weller hasn't done any homework. She's digested every lyric and has assembled a considerable amount of information. Unfortunately, the meat is dwarfed by gossip, name dropping, trivia (did you know that Carole King and Hettie Jones both raised young children in walk up apartments not far from each other?) and hyperbole. The biggest strength of the author is how she interprets the lyrics that inspired many. She brings them to life in describing the each of authors' lives at the time the words were written. Another strength is the respect and understanding she gives to each woman. It is the lack of discipline in the text and the hit or miss research that caused my 2 star assessment. The book shows the research method suggested in a footnote on p. 433 which references an unanswered email to Sue Mingus (widow of Charles) asking about Joni do you "regard each other as day for night opposites or sisters in spirit?" (What is being sought here?) On page 407 in an apparently answered email regarding an incident with Jackson Browne someone says "this is the first time a man ever hit Joni". (Of the implied second or third time, where is the follow up?) There is a lot of fanzine style jargon and overly long sentences laiden with real and stylized adjectives. As you go through the book, the hyperbole diminishes, but it never goes away. It is most absent in the parts about Carole's second marriage and Carly's son's operation making them two of the best parts. The lifestyles described are modest for millionares of this period. Have they been screwed on their record deals or have they squandered the money they should have been making? The only clue that one of these women might be fabulously wealthy is Carole King saying each divorce costs her a million dollars. Financial success is a considerable element in each of these lives and should have been covered. The book presents but does not develop these women as generational pioneers, not just in their music, but in their asymmetrical romantic relationships. Each of them had to hide their talent when it out shown their partners' and each of them suffered because their talent could not be hidden. I believe the affection some have for this book is a reflection of the affection for the women profiled. The idea of putting these three breakthrough songwriters (despite their disparate genres) together was ambitious, but is a good one. The author clearly understands the artists, the female-restricting environment from which they rose and their art. She's obviously willing to do the work, but seems to need direction. A good editor or editing team could have made this a top flight book.