Book Review: I Am Sophie Tucker: A Fictional Memior

Book: I Am Sophie Tucker: A Fictional Memior by Susan and Lloyd Ecker

Source: Borrowed from Publisher/NetGalley for an honest review

Publication: Available now

Description:

Meet the real life “Forrest Gump” of the first half of the 20th Century

Part fairy tale, part crime novel, part rags to riches Hollywood myth, I Am Sophie Tucker tells the outrageous story of one of showbiz’s biggest personalities.

From 1906 through the beginning of television, Sophie Tucker and her bawdy, brash, and risqué songs paved the way for performers such as West, Monroe, Midler, Cher, Madonna, and Gaga.

Sophie was like the Forrest Gump of the first half of the 1900s,” says co-author Susan Ecker. She was close friends with seven presidents, King George VI, young Queen Elizabeth, Chaplin, J. Edgar, Capone, Garland, Jerry Lewis, Sinatra and every other notable of her era.”

Tucker tried to get her story published for nine years, without success. Undaunted, Sophie hired half a dozen ghostwriters, but she still had no takers for her no holds barred autobiography. Eventually, Doubleday published a sanitized version in 1945.

After immersing ourselves in Sophie’s papers and surviving friends,” says co-author Lloyd Ecker, this initial volume is what should have been the actual autobiography of Tucker.”

Though she obsessively documented her life, Sophie loved to exaggerate for dramatic effect. Over the years, she told multiple versions of each important event. At the end, not even Sophie knew the difference between truth and tall tale.

This volume is 85% fact,” Lloyd explains. The other 15% who knows?”

I Am Sophie Tucker puts back all of the delicious bits nixed by Doubleday’s lawyers and throws in other Tucker show business dirt, intrigue, arrests, romance, murder, gangsters, and scandals. Now you can read it for yourself.


Rating: 2 stars

Review:

What can I say about this book? According to the description, it's 85% fact but for some reason it feels like the percentage should be lower than that. This book is part fact and part fiction but the problem is unless you've read a good deal about Sophie Tucker (whom prior to reading this I had no idea who she was) it's hard to pick the fact from the fiction. It's also written as if Sophie herself is the narrator telling her life story and there is a never ending mention of some of the most high profile people that were big in the past that Sophie or her parents have some how met.

This book is broken up into three parts with the first part being the most interesting to me because you got a good sense of who this boisterous woman was. The writing was bold, hilarious and sometimes provocative as you got see Sophie's life as a child and her growing passion for the arts. However, I thought the second part (which seem like an intermission to the story) felt slow and forced with it mainly focusing on various stories of her parents travels from Russia to America and then later her honeymoon travel with her third husband to recreate her parents' journey. Part three continues from part one with Sophie working her way through the vaudeville circuit.

Since this is a fictional memoir it does do it's job of providing a slightly funny biography of Sophie Tucker, well the first part that is. Other than the first part which was good, I felt like the second and third parts were trying too hard to be funny and they were extremely boring.

But I guess for me it would have been more interesting if this was just a regular biography because if Sophie Tucker was half as interesting and outrageous as this book described I would love to know the facts minus the fiction. However, since this is the first out of a trilogy I don't think I plan to read anymore but it did interest me in wanting to find out more about Sophie Tucker.