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With Billie
by Julia Blackburn
This biography of Billie Holiday is based on more than 150 interviews (many dating back to the 1970s and previously unpublished) with people who knew the jazz singer.
Pantheon, 368 pages
04/19/2005
$25.00
ISBN: 0375406107
Nonfiction
Biographies & Memoirs
Entertainment & Media
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Daily Telegraph Mick Brown
The substance and the spirit of her life leaps vividly and gloriously off the page, a phantasmagoria of the jazz life in all its tawdry and delicious joy and sadness, with Holiday floating through it like a beautiful, damaged butterfly.
The Economist
Ms Blackburn has produced a marvellous web of characters and tales, full of vigour and colour, in which Billie Holiday emerges in all her independent, awkward, variegated glory.
Washington Post Carolyn See
Julia Blackburn is far too cool to come to any conclusions. She just lets Billie's life glow.
The Guardian Mike Figgis
Of course everyone has their own slant on Billie, but what is so strong about this collection of memoirs is that the sum total of it all feels like a genuine portrait.
The Independent Vera Rule
Blackburn's book is the perfect album cover - it makes you want to put on the disc. All the discs.
Library Journal William G. Kenz
This is in many ways a joyful portrait of a woman determined to go her own way but, in the end, unable to fulfill her dreams. An essential complement to Farah Griffin's "If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery" and Stuart Nicholson's "Billie Holiday," which use a straightforward narrative approach. [15 Mar 2005, p.86]
Publishers Weekly
The one thing agreed upon by all the interviewees, though, is the mesmerizing quality of her voice, and fans will cherish this book as an attempt to reveal the complexities of the woman behind that extraordinary talent.
The Spectator Patrick Skene Catling
It is a pleasure to report that this is a really marvellous book, the most uninhibitedly intimate portrayal ever of the short, hard life and overall musical triumph of Lady Day.
The Nation Robert Christgau
With Billie is a compelling and intelligent book, less in its exposition than in the way it's conceived and assembled.
New York Review Of Books Arthur Kempton
Blackburn's way of working her raw material into a narrative gives an impressionistic portrait of her subject which conveys about as much that was true of Billie Holiday as can be had on a printed page.
TLS: The Times Literary Supplement Tony Russell
With Billie is a frustrating half of a biography: it directs a sharp light on Billie Holiday's life, but her art remains in the shadows.
The Independent Sholto Byrnes
This book adds to the field of Holiday studies, but no one should take it as the definitive truth. Neither, given the lack of space devoted to her singing, should it be treated as a starting point from which to delve into her life.
The New York Times Book Review John Leland
The results feel like table scraps snatched from a particularly rich table. Blackburn's approach doesn't bring Holiday into particularly new focus, nor, since we rarely hear Holiday's voice, does it bring us inside her psychological fortress.
Daily Telegraph Russell Davies
Whenever witnesses speak in their own voice, directly quoted, the book takes off; but paraphrase rules, so it happens too rarely.
Kirkus Reviews
Blackburn's book is lazy, lurid, superficial and more than a bit of a cheat.
 The average user rating for this book is 0.0 (out of 10) based on 0 User Votes
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