Lucy O'Brien

I was devastated after reading the first 'unauthorised' biography of Karen Carpenter, Little Girl Blue by Randy Schmidt (2010), and didn't honestly think another version could add anything new. Well, Lucy O'Brien's take is exactly that, nothing new, complete with references from 'official' biographer Ray Coleman, but the cover is stunning and I'm always ready to have my heart shattered over Karen Carpenter.

O'Brien focuses on Karen's professional and personal challenges as a female musician in the 1970s, relating everything to the singer's losing battle with self image and anorexia. The author attributes deeper meaning to lyrics that Karen performed but didn't write, and reports that Harold Carpenter, her henpecked father, commented in 1975: 'Well, she's not fooling me. That girl's got anorexia nervosa.' I'll take things that never happened for $500, Alex. Obviously, Karen's death at 32 from an eating disorder is going to shape her story, like biographies of Freddie Mercury are obsessed with AIDS, but I found the portentous tone of the writing a little overdone.

There are some fresh interviews, mainly from Rebecca Segal, the Carpenters' former tour manager, and a lot of musicians who worked with Karen once - and nothing new from Richard, obviously - but most of the content is recycled from earlier sources. There are no photographs, either, which I found frustrating and a bit cheap. The author claims that 'in order to tease out who Karen was as an artist and a musician, there is detective work to be done' but Randy Schmidt has already been there and done that. We all know that Richard and A&M persuaded Karen to give up her drums and be a feminine lead singer instead, taking her out of her comfort zone, and that her 'don't do disco' solo album was shelved until ten years after her death. And the 1989 biopic established what a monster mother Agnes Carpenter was, sacrificing her daughter's confidence and sabotaging her relationships with men to protect golden boy Richard.

Did there need to be another book about Karen Carpenter? No. Did I still listen to Karen's beautiful voice while reading and then cry when I got to the final chapters? Hell, yes. Thank you for the music, Karen.… (plus d'informations)