Martha Wainwright

A member of one of rock's royal family spills all the painful tea here - and puts a picture of herself smoking a cigarette on the cover, to show us she's just as defiant as she portrays herself to be in the pages. Martha Wainwright is the daughter of Kate McGarrigle (of Kate and Anna McGarrigle, renowned French-Canadian singing sisters) and Loudon Wainwright III (of the Dead Skunk song), and the sister of Rufus Wainwright (of Hallelujah rendition), and the niece of/stepdaughter of/ etc etc. Martha and Kate, and Martha and Rufus, but not so much Martha and Loudon, have the kind of incredibly powerful and fraught love and resentment between each other that's mesmerizing in its twisty turns. Martha's singing career is buffered by her family, who thinks she doesn’t write enough songs, and she’s not serious enough, nor does she work hard enough, to achieve success - but at what cost? She is haunted by Kate's first child, stillborn, and almost has the same outcome with her own first child, Arcangelo. Her marriage is a war between NYC and Montreal, between being an engaged mom (unlike her own upraising, with both parents seemingly half-absent) and achieving a level of fame comparable to that of her mother and brother. A few famous names are dropped humorously (Van Morrison, yuck), but the memoir is bounded by Martha's self-doubts. It still makes for an enjoyable and more honest celebrity bio than most.… (més)