Mother knows best.
At least that’s what she’d like you to think because she said it a hundred times while you were
growing up, until you actually believed. One day, though, if you were lucky, you learned that
Mother didn’t always know best, but she did her best – like in the new book “Cher: The
Memoir Part One” by Cher, when Mom helped make a star.
Though she doesn’t remember it, little Cheryl Sarkisian spent a few weeks in a Catholic
Charities orphanage when she was tiny, because her father had disappeared and her mother
couldn’t afford to take care of her. “Cheryl,” by the way, was the name on her birth certificate,
although her mother meant to name her “Cherilyn.”
That first time wasn’t the last time little Cher was left with someone other than her mother,
Jackie Jean, a beautiful, talented struggling singer-actress who’d been born into poverty and
stayed there much of her life. When money was tight, she temporarily dropped her daughter off
with friends or family, or the little family moved from house to house and state to state. Along
the way, relocating in and out of California gave Cher opportunities to act, sing, and to learn the
art of performance, which is what she loved best.
In the meantime, Jackie Jean married and married again, five or six husbands in all; she changed
her name to Georgia, worked in the movies and on TV, and she gave Cher a little sister, moved
the family again, landed odd jobs, and did what it took to keep the lights on.
As Cher grew up in the shadow of her glamorous mother, she gained a bit of glam herself,
becoming sassy and independent, and prone to separation anxiety, which she blamed on her
abandonment as a small child. In her mother’s shadow, she’d always been surrounded by movie
and TV stars and, taking acting classes, she met even more.
And then she met Salvatore “Sonny” Bono, who was a friend before he was a lover….
So, here’s the very, very happy surprise: “Cher: The Memoir Part One” is a downright fun book
to read.
If you’ve ever seen author Cher in interviews or on late night TV, what you saw is what you get
here: bald-faced truth, sarcastic humor, sass, and no pity-partying. She tells a good story, ending
this book with her nascent movie career, and she leaves readers hanging in anticipation of the
stories she’ll tell in her next book.
The other happy surprise is that this memoir isn’t just about her. Cher spends a good amount of
the first half writing about her mother and her grandmother, both complicated women who
fought to keep their heads and those of their offspring above water. Readers looking between
the lines will be enthralled.
Surely, “Cher: The Memoir Part One” is a fan’s delight, but it’s also a great memoir for anyone
who particularly loves the genre and doesn’t mind a bit of profanity. If that’s you, then you got
this, babe.
